


To Save A Sparrow

by piratesPencil



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Cyborgs, Medical Procedures, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, several other ships are mentioned in passing or are one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-11-12 13:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11162364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratesPencil/pseuds/piratesPencil
Summary: Angela saves Genji's life, but it is not an easy path for either of them.





	1. Assassination

Blackwatch had been keeping an eye on the Shimada clan for years. Half a dozen of their agents were spies planted at various levels of the yakuza family’s empire. They were well-acquainted with the antics of the Shimada lord’s younger son, an irreverent, promiscuous, rebellious young man.

Shimada Genji was a trained assassin with deep knowledge of the clan’s inner workings, but he was not nearly as loyal to the clan as his elder brother. Blackwatch had been working towards recruiting Genji for months – if they could lure him to their side, he would be an invaluable asset in Overwatch’s attempts to dismantle organized crime.

But they were not prepared for the assassination.

Genji had been declared a liability: too rebellious, too flippant, a danger to the clan. After the death of the Shimada clan’s head, leadership passed to his eldest son, Shimada Hanzo. The clan elders were wary of their young new leader. Later, Blackwatch would realize that they had devised a test of Hanzo’s dedication to the clan and of the ruthlessness he would need to possess to lead them, but at the time it was a simple order: keep your rebellious brother in check, and if you cannot, then dispose of him.

By the time the Blackwatch spies heard news of the impending assassination, it was already too late. The assassination order had been a carefully guarded secret, to prevent Genji from hearing wind of it and escaping, until it was too late. Genji was summoned before the clan elders. Two Blackwatch spies were among the other high-placing Shimada clan members who had been summoned to the gathering. Genji arrived in the Shimada mansion’s private reception hall and bowed before the elders, a lazy and irreverent gesture. He’d taken to dyeing his hair a shocking green colour recently, and his pupils were blown wide. He’d likely just come from a night of clubbing and drugs and drinking.

The elders said nothing, simply nodded in eerie unison. Genji moved to sit down.

Hanzo materialized from the shadows, bow drawn, a katana hanging from his hip.

“You have become a liability, brother,” he said. His voice was even, monotone, stiff as ice. “I am doing what must be done.” And he released the arrow from his bow.

Though Genji had the honed reflexes of a Shimada assassin trained from birth, Hanzo’s action caught him entirely by surprise. He didn’t even move to dodge until Hanzo’s arrow had already buried itself deep in Genji’s right shoulder.

From this short distance, with his level of skill, there was no way Hanzo had missed his mark. He could have aimed for Genji’s head or his heart, and killed him instantly. Instead, it was clear that Hanzo meant to draw out this assassination. This was not a quick kill. This was a display, a warning to the other Shimada clan members in attendance: if this was what Hanzo would do to his own brother for disappointing the clan, imagine what he could do to you.

Genji reached for the shuriken tucked under his clothes, faster even than Hanzo, and three sharp stars embedded themselves in Hanzo’s upper arm. The elder Shimada did not even flinch. In a flash, Hanzo had unsheathed his katana and leapt at Genji, cleaving his right arm cleanly from his body.

The two Blackwatch spies watched the gruesome display in horrified silence. They could do nothing without putting in peril years of covert affairs. Discreetly, one of them reached for the small comm device tucked into her boot, and pressed one of the pre-programmed buttons: _Send medical aid, but wait for further contact before making yourself known_. If, miraculously, Shimada Genji survived this fight, they would attempt to rescue him.

It seemed increasingly unlikely that there would be any part of him left to save, however.

This was a not a fight. This was a massacre. Under different circumstances, the brothers would have been much more evenly matched, the outcome not as predictable. But Genji was at a disadvantage – intoxicated, taken by surprise, and perhaps most damning, unprepared. Genji had not prepared himself to kill his brother – he hesitated to land killing blows. Hanzo did not hold back.

Genji screamed for mercy, and the silent audience did not move. They knew their place. They were spectators. Only Hanzo and Genji were participants, and Hanzo was made of ice, deaf to Genji’s pleas, to his questions. _Why, brother?_

After far, far too long, Genji’s body lay still and broken on the blood-stained tatami mats at the center of the reception hall: broken, dismembered, disemboweled. Hanzo knelt before the body and whispered something, his eyes closed. Then he stood, and walked out of the room.

“Clean this up,” one of the clan elders ordered, nodding at the corpse. “He will not receive a proper burial.” And then the elders followed their leader out of the room. The remaining audience sat in deafening silence.

Quietly, without looking at each other, the two Blackwatch agents offered to clean up the remains. Slowly, the rest of the audience filed out, until only the two of them were left. The one who had pressed her comm button earlier pulled the comm out of her boot and sent their medic contact a message: _Medical aid requested. Enter discreetly_. She shared their coordinates and slipped the comm back into her boot.

The other agent had approached the body and crouched just outside the growing pool of blood. “He’s definitely dead, right?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Oh, definitely,” the female agent replied. “But Blackwatch may want the body as evidence.”

Shortly after, Dr. Angela Ziegler entered the room, dressed in the simple uniform of the Shimada mansion’s servants. The Blackwatch agents did not ask how she had acquired the uniform, and they both stepped out of her way as she approached the body. Her staff was already pointed at the young Shimada, a thick line of crackling yellow energy arching between them. She knelt next to the body, unconcerned as deep red blood soaked the knees of her uniform, and pressed her ear to Genji’s torn chest.

“No breath, but there is a faint heartbeat,” she said. “Help me carry him to the medical transporter.”

The two agents exchanged a glance. Heartbeat or no, it seemed impossible for a human to recover from the state Genji’s body was in. It was hard to even look at the gruesome mess – his throat crushed, his spinal cord severed, his stomach split open, his face slashed beyond recognition, his right arm and both legs cleaved from his body, burned all over with dragon fire.

But they did not question Dr. Ziegler. They helped transport what remained of Shimada Genji to the medical transporter, parked discreetly a few streets away from the mansion, and then they returned to the reception room to scrub away the bloody mess they’d left behind.

* * *

Angela worked tirelessly to stabilize Genji’s failing body as the medical transporter zipped out of Hanamura and back to the Overwatch base. She did not think about what she was doing – she did not consider who this young man was, or what had happened to him, or what it would mean to bring him back from the brink of death. Angela did not discriminate when she healed. If someone needed help, she helped them relentlessly, focused only on the task of saving a life, whoever that life belonged to and however close that life was to blinking out of existence.

When they reached the base, she rushed Genji from the transporter to the medical bay, shouting orders at the other medics. It was well into the next evening before Genji was sufficiently stabilized, and she could step away long enough to take a deep breath, center herself, and find something to eat.

Gabriel Reyes found her standing by Genji’s bedside, slurping instant ramen from a styrofoam cup as she watched the steady beep of his heart monitor.

“Think he’ll survive?”

She nearly jumped at the sound of Gabriel’s voice. She turned to see him standing in the med bay doorway. He looked weary but curious, dressed in sweats, likely checking in before heading off to bed.

“I am not sure,” she admitted. “He is only very precariously stabilized.” Almost all of Genji’s organs were being artificially supported at this point, and without serious cybernetic enhancements, he would not only be missing three limbs, but blind, mute and completely paralyzed.

Gabriel gently rested a hand on Angela’s shoulder, and she leaned against him gratefully. She was exhausted, but she still didn’t feel comfortable leaving her patient with another medic for more than a few minutes at a time.

“You’re incredible, Ziegler, you know that?” Gabriel said. “My agents debriefed me about your rescue earlier. They said they’d already accepted this kid was dead and were prepared to tell me they’d failed to recruit the objective, but you swooped in there and started working on him without a second thought. Is there no one you can’t save?”

Angela sighed, a long and weary sound. “I wish,” she said.

He nodded and rubbed her shoulder affectionately. “So what do you think will happen to him? I don’t suppose there’s much chance of him becoming an assassin again.”

Angela shook her head. “You and Jack. No matter what happens, it’s always about the cause. Always about Overwatch and Blackwatch. You’re still trying to recruit this child?”

Gabriel shrugged. “It was only a question.”

She sighed again, sat down heavily in a chair by Genji’s bedside. “He will need serious cybernetic surgeries, more than I’ve ever performed before. Perhaps more than anyone has ever performed before.”

Angela set down her ramen and crossed her arms. In her time with Overwatch, she had become a leading expert in bionics and cybernetics, constantly working to rebuild the broken bodies of agents injured in the field. Working with Overwatch’s talented bio-engineers, she’d replaced arms, legs, eyes, even some organs. But with this patient, she’d need to rebuild almost an entire body to give him even the chance of survival, let alone a normal life.

“If anyone can do it, you can,” Gabriel said.

She smiled at him, tired but thankful. “We’ll see if I can,” she said.

* * *

It would not occur to her until much later, as she spent the next several months working so hard to find out if she _could_ rebuild Genji’s body, that she'd never stopped to consider if she _should_.

She quickly grew to care about the young man she was working so tirelessly to save. For the first few months, he remained in a coma, unconscious and always teetering on the edge of death, as she worked to replace and rebuild first his internal organs, and then his spine, his throat, his limbs, his eyes.

He would not be able to eat – his digestive system had been badly damaged and it would be impractical to build an artificial digestive system when the energy produced by food consumption would not be enough to power his cybernetics anyways. He would run on fuel and electricity, much like omnics. In fact, as she and the bio-engineers worked, it became clear that they needed to draw heavily on omnic technology. This was more than fixing a broken human body.

Angela was creating a cyborg.

At least, that’s what people began to say around the base, as rumours of the young Shimada’s miraculous survival spread. There were strict orders for the news not to spread outside the base – as far as the Shimada clan was concerned, Genji was dead. If anyone in the clan heard otherwise, it could compromise Blackwatch’s spies – and Genji could still prove to be an asset to Overwatch, Reyes insisted. Even if he couldn’t be a field agent, he had valuable information he could share.

If he ever awoke from his coma, of course.

Often, as she worked, Angela imagined how Genji would react when he woke up. Confusion, fear, pain – she expected these things. To awake in a body almost entirely new, after coming so close to death at his own brother’s hands, would be a terrifying experience. But she also expected relief, awe, perhaps even gratitude. She had not saved Genji’s life for selfish reasons – she did not think that he owed her anything, or that he should shower her with praise.

But she had never expected pure, unflinching hatred from him.


	2. Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major warning for suicidal thoughts and mentions of attempted suicide in this chapter.

Shimada Genji awoke for the first time several months after his brother assassinated him. He woke up screaming, scrabbling and tearing at the tubes and wires that bound him to the medical table. Angela was two rooms over, bandaging up a patient’s fresh stitches, when her comm device beeped loudly, alerting her that Genji’s vital signs showed that he was awake.

She tore into Genji’s room and threw the door open in time to see him rip an IV from his arm. She rushed to the table and held him down, shouting at the open door for backup. Two other medics rushed in and held down Genji’s arms as Angela strapped him to the table. He howled, a wounded and terrified animal.

“I am so sorry,” Angela repeated. “This is for your own safety. Please. Relax. I am so sorry.” She was shaking. This was not the first time that she had had a patient wake up violently, too frightened and in pain to act rationally. But Genji was so purely, so carnally afraid – and he was staring right at her.

Though his face was deeply scarred and his eyes, scarlet and glowing, were cybernetic, it was impossible not to see the burning hatred in them. Genji was lost and confused, but it was clear that he understood one thing: whatever had happened to him, Angela was responsible.

She jabbed a needle of sedative into his arm, still apologizing over and over in a calm voice, hoping to appease him, and he fell quickly back into unconsciousness. When she had replaced the IV he’d torn out and checked to make sure all of his vitals were still functioning, she left the room, shaky and winded. She leaned against the door and closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath.

She heard footsteps and opened her eyes to see Gabriel and Jesse jogging down the hall towards her.

“We heard the cyborg woke up,” Jesse said, coming to a stop beside her.

She frowned at the use of the word _cyborg_ , but nodded.

“How is he?” Gabriel asked. His eyes took in Angela’s pale face and shaky hands, and he added, “How are you?”

“Fine,” she answered quickly. “It’s fine. He woke up… rather violently. He was clearly confused and in a lot of pain. We sedated him.” She looked down at her hands, wrung them in a nervous motion she only resorted to when she was especially stressed. “Hopefully, we can wake him up more gradually this time and talk him through what happened to him.”

Jesse craned his neck, trying to get a look through the window over Angela’s shoulder. Gabriel pulled him away.

“Hey, I’m curious,” Jesse said. “I still haven’t gotten to have a look at this kid.”

“You’ll see him when he’s ready,” Gabriel said. “We all will.” It was a statement, but he was looking at Angela as he said it, and she could see the question in his eyes: Would Genji ever be ready to see the world outside this hospital room?

She could only shrug.

“Is he stabilized enough for you to come grab some dinner with us?” Gabriel asked. “You look like you could use it.”

She hesitated. It felt wrong to leave Genji alone after what had just happened, but the sedative she’d administered would last for several hours at minimum, so there was really no reason to stick around.

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and followed them gratefully out of the medical wing and towards the mess hall.

* * *

“At least we can confirm that the artificial voice box, the nerve connections in the artificial spine and the cybernetic eyes are functioning,” Angela said the next day as she made her report to the other medics working on Genji’s case with her.

“I know he was vocalizing and moving, so we can confirm the voice box and the nerve connections, but how can we be certain the eyes are functional?” one of the medics asked. Dr. Manandhar was a young woman who had only recently joined Overwatch’s medical team. She still had the glow of someone who hadn’t yet witnessed terrible things.

Angela looked up from her clipboard. “He looked at me,” she said. Then, realizing how unscientific that sounded, she coughed and added, “Of course, we will need to run further tests on all of his cybernetic processes. But from a cursory look, I think it is safe to say that so far his cybernetics are working as expected.”

“How much longer will we keep the patient sedated?” asked another medic, Dr. Lavoie, an older man who had been with the team almost as long as Angela had.

She steeled her voice and held the clipboard tightly in her hands. “I am going to ease him off the sedatives today and hopefully get a chance to talk to him in a slightly calmer state,” she said.

“Will you need backup?” Dr. Lavoie asked.

“I would like to speak to him alone, to minimize his fear and discomfort,” she said. Then she paused, and added, “But please remain nearby in case we face a repeat of yesterday.”

This time, Genji came to slowly, easing out of unconsciousness as the sedatives gradually wore off. Angela sat close to his bedside, clipboard clutched in her lap, her eyes flicking between the vital monitors and his scarred face.

His eyes flickered open. She steeled herself and leaned gently towards him. “Hello. I am Dr. Ziegler,” she said, first in English and then in Japanese.

For months now, she had been practicing basic Japanese phrases for this exact conversation. Though the Blackwatch intelligence told them that Genji was fluent in English, and had received tutoring in many other languages, she thought Japanese might be the most comforting language for him to hear as he awoke from his long coma.

He said something, fast and angry, in Japanese, and Angela wasn’t fluent enough to catch it. His voice had a metallic, artificial edge to it. She wondered how different it was from the voice he had had before.

“I’m not sure how much you remember-” she started, but he cut her off, speaking in heavily accented English.

“I remember,” he spat. “My bastard brother tried to- he-” The words died in his throat. When he spoke again, he sounded distant, as if he did not have the energy or the will to sustain his anger. “What happened to me?”

“You nearly died,” Angela said. She was not one for sugar-coating, for dancing around the facts her patients needed to know. “We – that is, Overwatch, have you heard of us?”

He nodded, vaguely, barely reacting to the news. She continued.

“We rescued you after the… fight... with your brother. But not before you had sustained considerable damage. We were uncertain if it was possible for you to survive.” She said _we_ , but she meant _me_.

She had assured everyone who asked that she knew what she was doing, that the money and effort being invested into this patient was worthwhile. In moments of weakness, she had admitted her uncertainties to Gabriel, but he had championed her cause, telling the higher ups that Genji was an asset worth saving, and assuring her that she could do it. But there had been so many moments when she’d been certain that Genji was lost, that he would never wake up.

And now, he was awake, and it was terrifying. It was no longer just in her hands. She needed Genji to understand that his will to live would be just as vital to his recovery as every surgery she had performed.

“You did survive, though,” she said. She smiled, attempting levity. “We replaced your damaged organs and limbs with cybernetic enhancements, and-”

“I’m not human anymore, am I?” he asked. His voice was low, monotone.

Angela paused.

“Of course you’re human,” she said softly. “You are no less human than someone who has received a prosthetic arm or an artificial heart.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t feel human,” he said.

* * *

Angela had thought that nothing would be harder than bringing Genji back from the brink of death. His recovery once he had woken up, though, was infinitely harder.

He flipped violently between blinding anger and depressive lethargy. In the early days, when he was still stuck in his hospital bed and faced several more surgeries before he could even attempt to move around on his own, he often tore out the tubes and IVs that sustained him. More than once, she was forced to restrain him, sometimes as he thrashed in carnal rage, sometimes when he told her, deadpan and emotionless, that he wanted to kill himself.

She did not know what to do. Anxiety grew in her, hot and restless. She rarely slept, doubling up her studies not only on cybernetics but on PTSD, suicidal ideation, depression. She had nightmares that Genji towered over her, a cybernetic beast, and tore her apart with his metal hands, screaming that she had done this to him. Or worse, the nightmares where she stood over his broken and bloodied body, as she had the night she’d rescued him from the Shimada mansion, but as she looked down at her hands, they were slick with blood, and she clutched a katana in one hand and a bow in the other, looking down at the man that she had murdered.

“Angela. _Angela_.” Dr. Lavoie’s gravelly voice snapped her out of a daze. She looked down at her hands. She was swabbing a patient’s arm with disinfectant before administering a shot, and she suspected that she had been performing the same swabbing motion for a least several minutes. The patient, a young agent who did not know her well, looked decidedly uncomfortable.

Dr. Lavoie placed a hand on Angela’s shoulder and gently pulled her away from the patient.

“You seem tired and distracted,” he said tactfully. “It would be unsafe to let you continue tending to patients in this state. Go have a rest, okay? I’ll take over your duties.”

She nodded, red-faced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

He squeezed her arm. “We know working with Genji has been hard for you,” he said. “But you can’t be his doctor and his psychologist and his best friend, Angela, as much as you might want to.”

She pursed her lips at the accusation and pulled away. “No,” she said. “Of course not. I’m sorry, Doctor. I just need a rest.” She nodded at him quickly and hurried out of the medical bay.

That was not what she was doing, was it? Trying to be Genji’s best friend? Though she was friends with many of her patients – Overwatch was a tight-knit community, almost a family among certain groups – it was not a doctor’s place to put friendship over care when it came to her patients. She was saving Genji’s life, nothing more, nothing less.

She realized she was starving. She had not slept for more than a few hours in days, and she could not remember the last time she had consumed anything other than coffee. She by-passed the mess hall and headed for the kitchen in the back, hoping to avoid any lunch-time stragglers so she could grab some food and head back to her room and to her thoughts in peace.

Gabriel and Jack were standing in the kitchen when she arrived, and she very nearly turned and left, but they had already spotted her. Jack was sitting on the counter, leaning forward to watch Gabriel pick through the fridge.

“Hey, Ang,” Jack said, grinning at her.

Gabriel looked up from the fridge and held up a pink plastic container. “Want the last yogurt?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, passing both of them to rifle through a cupboard. She pulled out two cans of soup and weighed them in her hands, debating which one to heat up. Possibly both. She was starving.

Jack had hopped off the counter and reached over to put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, you look exhausted,” he said. He gently pried the cans out of her hands and placed them back in the cupboard. “Let us make something for you. We were just getting ready to do a late lunch, anyways.”

She considered refusing, but she _was_ exhausted, and between the two of them, Jack and Gabriel were not bad cooks. She nodded and let Jack lead her to the small table in the corner of the kitchen. She sat down and rested her chin in her hands, watching Gabriel pull vegetables out of the fridge and hand them to Jack.

“So,” Jack said, carefully avoiding eye contact as he pulled a vegetable peeler out of the silverware drawer. “How is Genji?”

“No better, no worse,” she said, which wasn’t saying much. She had had to fight off several infections recently, which had delayed Genji’s physical recovery. And his mental state was still in shambles.

“You know, I don’t mean to gossip,” Gabriel said, which of course meant that he absolutely intended to gossip. “But some of the medics were saying that you’ve been distracted with your other patients recently… Are they talking shit about you? Because I’ll beat ’em up if they are.”

Jack laughed, and Angela let out a huff somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “No, they are right,” she admitted. “Genji’s case has… consumed me.”

“It’s a big thing you’re doing,” Gabriel said. “A miracle of modern medicine.”

“I wish Genji agreed,” Angela said, and then immediately regretted her words. She buried her face in her hands. Genji’s words from earlier burned in her ears. _I didn’t ask you to save me. If you couldn’t have let me die then, you should at least have the decency to let me die now._ “He wants to die,” she whispered.

“Hey.” Soft hands on her shoulders. She looked up. Gabriel was kneeling in front of her, looking up at her with grim seriousness. Jack stood behind him, looking as serious as he could with a carrot in one hand and a vegetable peeler in the other.

“He’s scared, and in pain, and you’re the only person he has to take it out on,” Gabriel said. “When we…” He paused and glanced up at Jack as if asking for permission to continue. Jack nodded. “When we were going through the super soldier program, I know we… we both said and did things to the doctors that they didn’t deserve. And we’d _consented_ to the program.” He paused, then added gruffly, “Though admittedly, they never warned us about half the things they did to us.”

Jack put down the carrot and peeler so her could reach out and squeeze Angela’s hand. “I told the doctors there that they should let me die. That everything hurt too much and I didn’t like what I was becoming.” Jack’s voice was even, but Gabriel looked away, as if he couldn’t stand to hear these words. “And at the time, I believed what I was saying. I was in hell. But now I’m still alive, and I have a job I care about and friends I care about and people I love.” He nudged Gabriel gently at that and Gabriel smiled. “And I’m very, very glad that those doctors didn’t let me die.”

Angela hiccupped. She hadn’t realized she was crying. She’d known that both Jack and Gabriel had been test subjects in the government’s super soldier program, before Overwatch. And as their doctor, she knew quite a bit about how the super soldier program had affected them – their increased immune systems, healing abilities and durability. Their enhanced speed, vision, hearing, metabolism. But she knew only the bare minimum about what, exactly, had been done to them. From the way they avoided the topic, the way their faces darkened when the super soldier program was mentioned, from the thinly veiled fear they both experienced every time she approached them with a needle or even a stethoscope, she had guessed that the program had not been a pleasant experience.

But she had never known it was this bad.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “But those doctors… they’re the bad guys in your story,” she said ruefully, trying to make light of the situation. “They caused you great trauma.”

Both men paused for a moment, and a great and terrible guilt welled up inside Angela’s chest. But then Jack said, “We were traumatized, yes. And there were many… unethical elements to the super soldier program. But it was the program that was flawed. The doctors themselves were only trying to make us as strong and healthy as possible.”

“One of them brought me extra chocolate pudding every time he had to give me a spinal shot,” Gabriel said, almost fondly, and laughed. “I still hated him, but I think I hated him the least.”

Jack kicked Gabriel gently at that. “Don’t tell her you hated him,” Jack said.

Gabriel made an apologetic face, and Angela laughed.

“At least he’s being honest,” she said.

“Honestly,” Jack said, “I don’t know if we’ve been helpful. But the difference between you and the doctors who worked on us… They were working for the good of the program, and the good of the military, and maybe the good of the world. But you are working for Genji alone. This is an act of pure selflessness, and someday, I’m sure, he’ll realize that.”

“It’s a lot easier to save someone’s body than it is to save their mind,” Gabriel said. “But you don’t have to do it alone. Let someone else help you sometimes, okay?”

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She was not sure if they had helped, either. But they had given her a lot to think about – things she had never considered when she first found Genji’s broken body and began to heal it without a second thought. She had never planned ahead for this moment, never expected these things to happen. She only hoped that she would not be the bad guy in Genji’s story.

Gabriel patted her knee and stood up. “Okay,” he said. “Are you feeling grilled cheese or mac and cheese to go with this salad? I’m thinking we could all use some cheese.”

She laughed. “Grilled cheese is good.”


	3. Blackwatch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, warning for discussions of suicide and suicide attempts in this chapter.

Genji’s recovery did not become any easier after that, but Angela did allow herself to ask for more help.

She requested permission to hire a top-tier psychologist to try and assuage Genji’s PTSD. She attended most of Genji’s physical therapy sessions initially, when he was taking the first steps towards moving on his own, but when it became clear that his cybernetically enhanced body would not only be able to move as swiftly as his human body, but perhaps even more so, she allowed Gabriel to begin attending the sessions, and eventually he took them over almost completely as physical therapy became training.

Unconscious as he was when they found him, Genji could not agree to joining Overwatch when they first began the process of rebuilding his body. Once he awoke, the higher ups gave him a choice: pay back the exorbitant amount of money they had spent on saving his life, or agree to become an Overwatch agent in whatever capacity he was capable of.

Angela tried desperately to fight them on this – Genji had not asked to be saved, and it was not fair to ask him to repay them, either with money or with service. When they refused, she begged Gabriel to try and change their minds. He said he would try, for her, but it was unlikely – it had always been their plan to recruit Genji. The only reason they had saved him was because he was an asset. Though Angela might have saved Genji out of selflessness, every action Overwatch took served a greater purpose than individual human lives.

When Genji found out about the deal, though, he agreed immediately.

“They want me to become an agent so I can help them take down the Shimada clan, right?” Genji asked. He sat across from Angela in her office, his shoulders bunched up to where his ears would have been if they had not been burned away by dragon fire. He was up and about at this point, not yet training, but able to walk short distances and beginning to perform fine motor control tasks.

“Yes,” Angela said, shocked by how easily Genji was agreeing to this. He still sounded monotone, listless, but he had not hesitated.

“Good,” Genji said. “The Shimada clan is a clan of monsters. They were always beasts, and Hanzo worst of all.” He spat Hanzo’s name like it was dirt in his mouth, like it was physically painful to say. His listless tone grew angry. “I’ll tear every one of them limb from limb, leave them bleeding on the floor, and I’ll make sure their hearts have stopped.”

His eyes, terrifying infrared – and she found herself regretting the aggressiveness of that colour, wondering if the bio-engineers could have constructed them in a less frightening way – shone with wrath.

“Only then can I die satisfied,” he said.

From then on, Genji threw himself into training with reckless abandon. He no longer actively tried to kill himself, but he feared not at all for his own life. He attacked mercilessly when he sparred, trained himself to the point of exhaustion almost nightly, told Angela he was in pain and needed medical attention only when he was so far gone that he could barely move. He had a purpose now: to dismantle the clan that had killed him. It was exactly what Overwatch had wanted him for.

Gabriel welcomed Genji into Blackwatch eagerly, and though Angela loved Gabriel dearly, she felt slightly betrayed.

“Gabriel,” she said one night, calling to him as he strolled past her open office door.

He paused, peeked his head inside. “Yes?”

She beckoned him in. “Can we chat for a moment?”

“Of course,” he said. He stepped inside, clicked the door shut behind him. He grabbed a chair and spun it around, sitting on it backwards and resting his arms on the back of it. “What’d you want to talk about, good doctor?”

She smiled, slightly strained.

“I saw that Genji will be going on his first Blackwatch mission tomorrow,” she said.

He nodded. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “It’s a really small thing, simple reconnaissance, just to test him out in the field. There’ll be plenty of backup, and I’ll be there, too.”

She nodded. “I’m certain he’ll be fine. I trust you, Gabriel. But…” She paused. “Should we be encouraging this? Is this really what’s best for Genji’s mental health?”

Gabriel frowned. “What do you mean?”

She waved her hands vaguely, trying to gather her thoughts. She was a soldier, yes, but she was a medic first and foremost. She did not enjoy the thrill of combat. She saw necessity in certain battles, but it pained her to see her closest friends throw themselves into violence time and time again.

“Genji is so fragile still,” she said. “Still so afraid, so in pain. The psychologist I hired has made no breakthroughs. Though Genji’s suicidal energy had been redirected towards revenge, I don’t think he’s really any better off than he was before. If we could try and help him recover mentally, before-”

Gabriel interrupted her. “I’m sorry, Angela. I know you care about your patients. And I care too. I care about every one of my agents, more than you know. But Overwatch is an organization of soldiers. And Genji has agreed to become an agent. I know he was coerced unfairly, and I’m sorry, but you said yourself how quick he was to agree, how much he _wants_ this. And I definitely think you should continue trying to help him, but as an organization we cannot afford to keep coddling him. Especially when he doesn’t want to be coddled.” Gabriel stood up. “I’ll do everything I can to help him, Angela. But he’s a Blackwatch agent, and I can’t treat him differently than my other agents. He has to go on this mission tomorrow.”

Angela opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Though she didn’t like it, Gabriel was right – Overwatch was a military organization. She was a medic, but this was not a hospital. Overwatch’s top priority was not recovery and care, it was sacrificing the lives of few for the good of many. And Gabriel, more than Angela could ever be or ever wanted to be, was a soldier first and foremost. He and Jack had suffered horribly in the hands of the super soldier program, and they had come out the other side more dedicated than ever: if they had suffered to be stronger and better at fighting, then they had an obligation to fight for what they felt was right.

And now, Gabriel was passing that legacy onto Genji, whether Angela liked it or not.

She sighed, nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Genji is a Blackwatch agent. I know. But please… take care of him.”

Gabriel gave Angela a tired smile. “You know I will,” he said.

* * *

One mission became two, then ten, then a hundred. Genji volunteered for every mission he could get his hands on, especially when they concerned the Shimada clan, or any organized crime syndicate that had even a slim chance of being tied to the Shimadas. He devised missions of his own, asking for clearance time and time again to seek out locations and people he remembered from his time with the clan. He was a skilled and stealthy assassin. It was clear that, whatever rebellious playboy lifestyle he had lived before, he had excelled at his ninja training. He was in and out without ever being spotted. The Blackwatch spies still planted in the Shimada clan confirmed repeatedly that the clan suspected nothing: no one knew that Genji was still alive.

Not long after Genji joined Blackwatch, they received the news that Hanzo had abandoned the clan, murdering the elders and several other high-ranking members before disappearing. Angela tried to talk to Genji about his reaction to the news, about whether he planned to continue dismantling the Shimada clan or if he hoped to track down his brother. He sat in the med bay in silence, letting her perform a routine checkup and maintenance on his body, and answered none of her questions.

“My mission remains unchanged,” he said at the end of the session, and leapt from the room with practiced grace.

The Shimada clan disintegrated shortly thereafter. Between Genji’s ruthless dedication to their downfall, the clan’s lack of leadership, and mysterious attacks that were rumoured to come from a rogue Hanzo himself, the clan survived less than a year after Hanzo’s disappearance.

For months after the clan was officially defunct, Genji continued to hunt feverishly for his missing brother. He jumped on every scrap of intel that seemed to even hint at Hanzo’s presence, threw himself even harder into training, disappeared on side missions frequently without even receiving clearance.

And then one day Angela entered her office to see Genji kneeling on the floor, the point of his katana pressed against his throat, hands shaking.

She froze in the doorway. The blood samples she’d been carrying slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor. She felt the small splashes of blood fleck her legs, but did not move.

Genji looked up at her. His eyes, the only part of his face not hidden by his protective mask, stared up at her. They did not burn with the hatred she had seen that first day he woke up, when he had decided that she was the source of all his pain. Instead they seemed only heavy – heavy with the weight of the world, the weight of everything that was too much for him.

“Would this even work?” he asked her. It was more difficult to convey emotion with an artificial voice, but it was not hard for Angela to hear his weariness, thick with the tears that his artificial eyes were unable to shed. “If I stabbed myself right now, would I even die? Or would this godforsaken body continue to sustain me?”

She swallowed hard. She wanted to say the right thing, wanted to say what he needed to hear so he would not spill his blood on the carpet of her office. But the only thing she knew to say was the truth. “Eventually, you would die, yes,” she said. “But the artificial processes that help to support your remaining human organs – your heart, your lungs, some kidney functions – would continue to sustain you even after considerable bloodloss and lack of oxygen intake.”

Genji did not move, continued to stare at her.

“I could easily stabilize you and repair your damaged parts before you died, even if you stabbed yourself,” she said.

His hands shook harder.

“Would you?” he asked. “Would you stop me from dying once again?”

She bit her lip, so hard she almost tasted blood. “Would you want me to?” she asked.

He did not answer. For a long moment, she feared he would do it, and she would have to make the choice once more – to bring him back again, or to let him die. She did not know which choice would be the moral one.

And then he put down the katana, gently, let it rest on the carpet beside him. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“I need to leave,” he said. “My mission to dismantle the Shimada clan is complete. Hanzo has abandoned the clan and is untraceable. I am no longer required to serve the purpose I was recruited for. My debt to Overwatch is repaid, and now I must leave, or I will die here.”

Very slowly, afraid to startle him, Angela stepped into the room. She dared not touch him, but she felt the need to approach him, to let him know that she was listening closely.

He looked up at her again. “Please, give me a body built for leaving.”


	4. Leaving

Genji’s body had been built to be as simple and lightweight as possible – his left arm, which had remained mostly unharmed, was exposed, as were his eyes. His cybernetic exoskeleton did very little as far as diagnostics and self-repair. It didn’t need to – Genji could come to the med bay and receive immediate treatment from Angela whenever he needed it. She was also constantly working to improve his body, and every port needed to be easily accessible and changeable. The cables installed at the back of his neck were used to recharge his cybernetics much more quickly than his internal processes were capable of, and allowed Angela to access the programs that controlled everything inside Genji that was digital.

But Genji was right. This was not a body meant for leaving. This body, as it was now, would not survive long away from the Overwatch base. Genji could go weeks, perhaps even months, without needing to visit the med bay, but certainly no longer than that. It hadn’t been an issue until now – Genji lived at the Overwatch base and rarely went on missions that lasted longer than a few weeks.

But now. If he wanted to leave, really leave, to live the life of independence he wanted and deserved – he would need a body that could sustain itself without her.

So, although it broke something inside of her to know that he might never return, she built him a new body. This one had a much more robust exoskeleton – it covered every part of his human skin, sleek and protective. Even more than before, it relied on omnic processes – the processes that allowed omnics to diagnose and repair every glitch in their system, to self-regulate their internal mechanisms – they were all integrated into his system. It was not perfect – if he was grievously injured, or became ill with a human illness, he would need to seek medical attention, and it was unlikely that anyone other than Angela had the resources to correctly treat his unique body. But he could leave, and as long as he avoided grievous injury or disease, he would have no reason to return.

It occurred to her, as she worked on upgraded replacement parts with the bio-engineers, that they didn't need to stick with the ominous black and red colours of their original designs. It was possible that Genji would want something less frightening, and less reminiscent of the Blackwatch he was leaving behind.

She asked him, quietly one evening when he’d come in for a fitting of his new left arm plates.

“The display lights on your body,” she said. “They need not be red. You were fashioned with Blackwatch money to be a Blackwatch agent, and those were the colours they chose, but it’s entirely cosmetic. If there’s a colour you’d prefer…”

He did not answer right away. She thought he might not answer. He had never been especially talkative with her, and since his decision to leave Overwatch, he’d become even more stoic, often entirely silent for days at a time.

She jotted measurements on his chart and accepted that he wouldn’t answer. There was no reason they couldn’t stick with red. She suspected Genji didn’t care at all about the aesthetics of this body he hated so much.

But then he answered, softly, his head bowed, “Green. I’ve always loved the colour green.”

She remembered the shocking green hair he’d had when he’d arrived, some of it burned, all of it soaked in blood. His hair – what remained of it – had grown out to black and he had never shown a desire to dye it back, but the fact that that aesthetic from before had stuck with him made her smile.

“Of course,” she said. “I like green, too.”

He was not wearing his facemask – he removed it only when he absolutely needed to, which was mostly only when she was running an inspection on his body, because he didn’t need to eat – and he almost smiled at her, a quick flash, human upper lip against synthetic lower jaw.

She smiled back. In the short years that she had known him, Genji had become one of the most important people in her life. A difficult, painful person, and she knew that she was still, probably, the bad guy in his story. But she cared so deeply for his well-being, as though his health and happiness had become impossibly intertwined with her own, and although she hated to lose him, she could see that this was what he needed, what he had needed all along. What she had wanted for him. Not to become an agent of destruction, but to have the chance to heal.

* * *

Angel ran the final tests on Genji's new, self-sustaining body a few months later. There had been no invasive surgeries this time, just swapping out external parts and improving the computer processes that sustained him, so he faced no difficult recovery process. She had run every test she could think of, watched him move and train with a hawk’s eye, and she had to admit: he was perfectly strong and functional and infinitely more independent than before.

“You are cleared to leave,” she said finally, her voice even with the practiced neutrality of an impartial doctor. He didn’t need to know that it pained her to see him go.

Genji slid off the examination table and stared down at her. His partial face mask had been replaced with a complete faceplate, better long-term protection for his cybernetic eyes. The faceplate made it impossible to read his already inscrutable expressions, though. He was as blank-faced as an omnic, and Angela’s heart thudded in her chest as he stared at her. She could imagine the burning hatred she’d seen so many times in his eyes, or the impossible weariness of that night with the katana in her office.

Instead, he made a soft humming sound, and bowed deeply to her.

“Thank you, Dr. Angela Ziegler,” he said, still leaning forward, his face inclined towards the floor. “For everything.”

There was no sarcasm in his voice, no heat or malice. Just thanks. Emotion welled up in Angela’s throat. She couldn’t find the words her tongue searched for. Before she could say anything, Genji had stood and slipped from the room. She stared at the spot where he had stood moments before, and she cried.

* * *

Genji departed without fanfare. When Angela awoke the next morning, he was gone. Over breakfast, Gabriel confirmed that Genji’s living quarters in the Blackwatch hall, always bare and minimal, were completely empty. Genji had only told those who absolutely needed to know – Angela, Gabriel, the Overwatch higher-ups – that he was leaving, and he had not told anyone where he was going.

Angela felt the hollowness of his leaving deep in her stomach. She often went long stretches of time without seeing Genji – unless he needed medical attention, he generally avoided her – but knowing that she could very likely never see him again was a different experience entirely.

“I know you’re gonna miss him,” Gabriel said, reaching across the table to squeeze her arm. “We all will. He was a good kid, and a great agent. I wish he woulda stayed, but I think he needed this.”

She nodded and picked listlessly at the toast growing cold on her plate.

“At least he told you he was leaving,” Jesse said. He sat next to Gabriel, clicking the fingers of his metal hand – the result of a recent gruesome injury – against a glass of orange juice. “I knew you were giving him those upgrades so he could leave someday, but…” He slammed his metal hand down on the table and orange juice sloshed over the edge of the cup, pooling around his plate.

“Jesse!” Gabriel snapped. He grabbed a napkin and started sopping up Jesse’s mess, gave the young agent a dark look.

“It’s not fucking fair,” Jesse said. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. His hat rested low on his head, obscuring his eyes. “We were friends, you know? He told me stuff he didn’t tell anyone else. Hell, I’m pretty sure he was actually _happy_ sometimes when we hung out, which was a goddamn miracle. And then he just up and leaves without a word.”

“That’s just Genji’s way,” Angela said, looking down at her toast again. “Maybe he’ll return.” She didn’t believe her words even as she said them.

“Fuck him,” Jesse said, and stood up. He slammed his chair against the table and stormed out of the room, spurs jingling.

Gabriel watched him go, then ran a hand down his face. “Why do I always end up with angriest, saddest kids?” he said.

Angela smiled wryly. “Like master like student, I suppose.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Is that why Genji’s so much like you?”

She froze, then squinted up at Gabriel. “Like me?”

“You both think you’re excellent at repressing every emotion,” he said. “But you’re both terrible at it.”

* * *

Angela did not see Genji again until the recall, many years later. And so much changed in that time.

First the growing divide between Gabriel and Jack, and then Ana’s sudden death. The disbanding of Blackwatch. Gabriel's death, Jack’s disappearance, and the disbanding of Overwatch in its entirety, shut down by a government that had declared them a liability rather than an asset. Though Angela had had many problems with Overwatch, it still stung deeply to see the organization she had poured her life into disgraced in such a way – had they not saved thousands, millions of lives?

With nowhere to call home, Angela first returned to Switzerland, but found she could not settle down in the hospital where she had once been head of surgery. She had become battle-hardened and impatient – she needed to be on the front lines, saving lives in the moment rather than waiting for them to come to her. She began to travel to war-torn areas, rescuing soldiers and civilians from every kind of horrifying situation.

She missed her Overwatch comrades like a phantom limb. Sometimes she lay awake in the evenings, recalling the times when her surrogate family had been whole – warm moments with Gabriel and Jack, before their differences and their stresses had torn them apart. Quiet moments with Ana, sipping tea and chatting, and exciting moments with Fareeha, who’d held her tightly in her arms and taken her flying up impossibly high in her rocket suit on more than one occasion. Torbjorn, Lena, Winston, Reinhardt, Jesse – the names dug into her soul painfully. She received correspondence from some of them occasionally, even tried to visit when she could tear herself away from the battlefield, but everyone was strewn across the world, listless, as though they had all lost their purpose in their own ways.

And then, several years after Genji left, she began to receive mail from him – short, cryptic letters that spoke of enlightenment and forgiveness. They came first from an address in Nepal – when she looked it up, she discovered it was the omnic Shambali Monastery. And then they came from all over, as though Genji had begun to travel nomadically once more. He did not explain much of where he was or what he was doing, and once he began to travel she had no way of writing him back.

But she cherished the letters, saw him growing and healing and changing through them in ways she had never imagined he would be able to. Her heart swelled with the knowledge that he was okay, more than okay – better than he had ever been with Overwatch, better than he could have ever hoped to be. A part of her ached, though, knowing that despite her best efforts, she had never been able to provide Genji with this kind of healing.

But she had built him the body meant for leaving, she reminded herself. She had given him the opportunity to go on this journey. She had done the only thing she could do to help him – she had let him leave.

When Winston issued the recall, she hesitated. She wanted desperately to rejoin her comrades, to rediscover that sense of purpose that traveling aimlessly through war-torn countries had never quite been able to provide for her.

But she still had her qualms about the organization. They were still soldiers, still a military organization that valued the many over the few, that would save a desperate young man’s life only to blackmail him into joining them.

But she could not stay away. Her draw to Overwatch was too strong. She made her fears clear to Winston – she wanted more say in how her patients were treated, she wanted more thought to be given to peaceful resolutions rather than always assuming violence was the correct action. Winston listened to her thoughts – told her that Overwatch was a growing and changing organization, and that he too wanted it to be as wonderful and peaceful and positive as it could possibly be.

She was still hesitant, but the moment she stepped into Watchpoint: Gibraltar, it felt like coming home, finally.

Fareeha was there, and Torbjorn and Reinhardt and Lena and Jesse. Angela greeted each one of her old comrades with tearful hugs and accepted gentle teasing with grace. They piled into the mess hall, ate warm food and traded stories of their years apart, some fanciful and fabricated, others difficult and far too real. Their bodies and their stories seemed to fill up the entire mess hall – the Gibraltar Watchpoint was significantly smaller than the Overwatch base they had inhabited years ago, and the team itself was much smaller as well. Winston had only called back the core team, and not everyone had answered the call.

That first night back, after she had accepted one too many beers from Reinhardt, and after Fareeha had ruffled her hair and promised to take her out flying once again, and after she had said goodnights that made her heart soar with familiarity, Angela headed for Winston’s quarters.

Winston had been making his way up the ladder, both in the scientific division and the leadership division, when Overwatch had crumbled. He’d stayed behind, living at Watchpoint with Athena, the AI he’d pioneered. More than any of them, Winston had no life outside of Overwatch, nowhere else he could go except perhaps the moon.

It seemed right that he should lead Overwatch, now. And it comforted Angela to know that he was now the top authority – not the shady higher-ups who had coerced Genji into becoming their weapon, but a gentle primate who had left his home on the moon when the rebellion became too violent for him to bear. She saw eye to eye with Winston more than any other Overwatch authority – even more than she’d seen eye to eye with Gabriel or Jack or Ana, although she tried hard not to think about them.

She knocked carefully on Winston’s door. It was well past two in the morning, and she didn’t want to wake him if he was asleep. But she suspected he, like her, had too much on his mind to find sleep tonight.

She was right. He opened the door almost immediately and stood in the doorway, an imposing figure in comically human striped pajamas.

“Angela,” he said, waving her inside. “Did you need something?”

She nodded, and her head swam slightly. She definitely should not have drunk so much. It occurred to her that the only reason she was asking Winston this question at two in the morning was because she was a bit drunk, but the alcohol dulled her embarrassment enough that she did not care.

“Did you invite Genji back to Overwatch?” she asked without preamble. Her embarrassment caught up with her slightly at that point, and she began to ramble, “Of course, I would understand if you didn’t, and even if-”

“It’s alright, Angela. I knew you would ask,” he interrupted, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Of course I invited Genji. We had many difficult times with him and he did not always seem to return our affection, but Genji was close to many of us. To you, to Jesse… to Gabriel.”

They both paused at the name, as if sharing a silent prayer. Then Winston continued, “It has been difficult to contact him, because of his nomadic lifestyle. I left the message with the Shambali Monastery, his last known place of residence. I have not heard back from him yet, but that does not mean he will not return to us. Have patience.”

Angela nodded. She’d known that she missed Genji, as she had missed all her comrades in their time apart, but she had not realized how _much_ she wished to see him again until she was surrounded by the rest of her surrogate family – or at least, those who were alive – and he was not there.

“He’s been writing me letters, you know,” Angela said. “For quite a while now. He seems to be doing much better.”

Winston smiled widely at that. “I didn’t realize he’d been corresponding with any of us. That’s excellent, Angela. Maybe the chances of him returning are even better than I’d hoped.”

Angela nodded. “I hope so, too.”


	5. Return

Genji returned to Overwatch a few short weeks later. The small, core Overwatch team was working constantly to rebuild - fixing up the Watchpoint which had fallen into disrepair over the years despite Winston’s best efforts, reorganizing their communications systems and mission plans, recruiting members new and old to flesh out their small team. Working day and night, Angela hardly had the time to miss Genji.

And then, one day, he was there. True to Genji’s style, he had not announced his return. He did not answer Winston’s message. Instead, he simply turned up at the Watchpoint.

Angela was restocking the med bay, carefully storing bandages and needles and disinfectants. She did not hear anyone approach, but she heard the voice in the doorway.

“Dr. Angela Ziegler.”

She froze. She had not heard that voice in years, but it was unmistakeable – slightly robotic, a heavy Japanese accent, a sarcastic lilt that had often been derogatory but now sounded almost light-hearted.

She dropped her box of medical supplies on the counter and spun around. Genji stood in the doorway, tall and shoulders squared, gleaming white and silver and green. His faceplate was in place, so she could not see his expression, but the moment she turned to face him, he leapt at her. For a terrifying second, she though he was attacking her – that after all this, he had come to kill his villain, the person who had tortured him, who had made him into a weapon. A part of her had expected this, had thought it would be fitting and right, even as she read his letters of self-acceptance and enlightenment.

But he was not attacking her. He was hugging her, tightly and warmly. The metal edges of his exoskeleton dug into her skin, but she hardly noticed – Genji had never hugged her before, had barely touched her, had always recoiled from her skin like it burned him. She did not think she’d seen Genji hug _anyone_ in all his time with Blackwatch. But now, he held her as if he never intended to let go. After a moment’s hesitation, she wrapped her arms around him as well, felt the solid metal of his body shift under her touch.

After several long moments, Genji pulled away, but his hands still rested on her shoulders as he looked down at her.

“Dr. Angela Ziegler,” he repeated, and he almost sounded awed. “I have missed you.”

“Genji…” she said, because she didn’t know where to start. Years worth of words piled up in her throat and stuck there.

He lifted one hand from her shoulder and removed his faceplate, placing it on the counter beside them. His face was still marred with deep lacerations and burn scars, his eyes still a harsh and shining crimson (when they had replaced his outer lights with green, they had been unable to change the red of his eyes, not without unnecessary invasive surgeries, so they remained as a reminder of his Blackwatch body), but there was a lightness in his expression. He smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the edges, pulling into laugh lines.

“I have so much to tell you, and so much to thank you for,” he said. “And so much to apologize for.”

Finally, Angela managed to speak around the lump in her throat. “You don’t need to apologize, Genji. If anything, I should apologize. Whether I meant to or not, I turned you into a weapon. I-”

He placed the smooth synthetic pad of his palm against her mouth.

“You gave me a _body_ , Angela. And oh, I have done so much with this body.” He winked at her and pulled away. He picked up his faceplate and replaced it lightly. “Come on,” he said, nearly skipping through the doorway. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

She blinked. She had never seen Shimada Genji wink, had never seen him _skip_ , had never heard him laugh the way he did now, cheery rather than bitter and derisive. Had she not built his body with her own hands, she would not have known who this man was.

She followed him out of the med bay and down the hall. He walked with his shoulders back, even-paced but light. It was clear that he had been living as a monk – he had the grace, the ease of posture, and the warm, all-encompassing joy.

* * *

Genji led Angela past the common areas and towards the living quarters, where every agent had a room, a bathroom and a kitchenette. Many of the rooms were still empty, with such a small Overwatch team, and Genji led her to one of the rooms that had been out of use until now.

“I already checked in with Winston,” he said. “He prepared a room for us.”

 _Us._ Not Genji alone. Genji and someone he had brought along with him.

Genji paused in front of the door to his quarters and tilted his head towards Angela. “Winston said you were hoping I would return.”

“I was,” Angela said. “I’m very happy you’ve come back.”

“Me, too,” Genji said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

He pushed open the door and she followed him into his quarters. An omnic hovered, legs crossed, a few feet above the ground, staring out the window at the ocean outside. It turned to face them as they entered, the blue lights on its forehead glowing brightly. It was a standard model for a humanoid omnic, and it wore the clothes of a monk.

“Dr. Ziegler, this is my master, Zenyatta,” Genji said, bowing towards the omnic. “He has wanted to meet you for a long time.”

The omnic, Zenyatta, floated serenely towards Angela and bowed in front of her. “Dr. Ziegler,” he said, his voice robotic yet slow and comforting, “Genji has spoken of you often.”

Angela’s breath stuttered in her throat. Genji had not shown any animosity towards her in the minutes since he’d arrived at Watchpoint, but she feared the things he might have said about her over the years. She remembered all too clearly how angry he had still been when he’d left Blackwatch.

“He has spoken of you, too,” Angela said, retuning the omnic’s bow. Genji had mentioned his teacher, an omnic monk named Zenyatta, in several of his letters. She had not realized that the monk would be returning to Overwatch with him, or that they would be, apparently, sharing a room.

“Good things, I hope,” Zenyatta said, his voice light with laughter.

“There are only ever good things to say about you, Master,” Genji said. His voice was teasing, but gently so, full of fondness. Angela could not take her eyes away from Genji. Who was this light and joyful man? His letters, though they had been filled with positivity, had not prepared her for this new Genji.

She remembered the Blackwatch reports about Genji’s past, about the man Genji had been before his brother assassinated him – a rebellious playboy, all his time spent in bars and clubs and arcades, bedding suitors and hiring prostitutes every night, spending exorbitant sums on clothing and electronics and illicit substances. That was not the Genji she had known at Blackwatch, nor was it the Genji she saw now, who plucked an orb from the ring gently floating around Zenyatta's neck and tossed it lightly into the air, catching it with the other hand while the omnic tutted at him. But perhaps she could see a spark of that Genji that had been lost – not the rebelliousness or the vices, but the carefree joy and teasing nature.

Genji tossed the golden ball at Angela and she nearly dropped it, surprised at his action. It was heavier than she had expected, but warm, and somehow easy to hold even with its heaviness. It felt right in her hands.

“Zenyatta is a healer,” Genji said. “Of the soul, but also of the body.”

“Genji told me of your healing staff,” Zenyatta said. “It uses nanomedicine, yes? My orbs can emit a similar healing energy.” He twisted his wrist and the golden ball lifted from Angela’s hands and hovered before her, emitting a stream of yellow energy very similar to that of her staff.

“Incredible,” she said. Her shoulders relaxed as the warm energy washed over her. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been until she relaxed. She wondered how long she’d been this tense – since Genji had arrived in the medical bay, minutes ago? Or long, long before that?

Though Zenyatta’s omnic face was incapable of expression, he hummed, a pleased sound, and she sensed that this was the omnic equivalent of a smile. The golden orb drifted back to the ring around his neck.

“I’ve worked with medic omnics before,” Angela said. Omnics often served as medics, especially in war or rescue situations that were dangerous for human medics. “I’ve never seen anything like these orbs.”

Zenyatta hummed again and squared his shoulders, looking proud. “They are a product of my own creation,” he said. “Though the technology is based on Shambali monk medicinal and meditative research.”

“Does this mean you will be joining Overwatch?” she asked. “I could always use more talented medics on my team.”

“If Winston will have me,” Zenyatta said. “Genji and I have been traveling together for many years now. When he received the call, he believed very strongly that he needed to return to this organization, but I could not bear to part with my student.”

“And I with you, Master,” Genji interjected.

Zenyatta dipped his head. “Yes. Winston seemed receptive to the idea of me joining your team, when we arrived earlier today. I must perform some tests and interviews before becoming a full Overwatch member, of course, but he said that he took Genji’s good words about me very seriously.”

It was absolutely, abundantly clear how close Genji and Zenyatta were, how much deep fondness they held for each other. Angela did not think it was her place to ask about the specific nature of their relationship – though human/omnic relationships were common in omnic-positive areas, Angela did not know if Zenyatta’s religion forbade intimate relationships, or what Genji’s sexuality might be, or any other detail of their private lives. But their closeness was clear, and it was clearly something that Genji had needed.

Angela smiled at Zenyatta, tried to pour as much thanks and warmth into that smile as she could. “I’m glad you’ll be joining us, Zenyatta,” she said. “And I’m glad you’ve done so much for Genji.”

“Now, don’t give him too much credit,” Genji said. He leapt deftly onto the bed and landed with his legs crossed, bouncing like a child, hands gripping his ankles. “I had to do plenty of soul-searching on my own. I don’t think we’re giving _me_ enough credit here.”

Zenyatta laughed, and Angela stared, still unable to wrap her head around this new Genji.

“I think I need a shower,” Genji said. He flopped backwards on the bed and spread his arms wide, snuggling into the thick mattress. “Or perhaps a nap. Either way, I hope we can join everyone for dinner?”

“Of course,” Angela said. “Does anyone other than Winston and I know that you’ve arrived?”

Genji sat up again and shook his head. “Not yet. Jesse will be my next target. But first, a shower.” He slid from the bed and headed for the bathroom. “I will see you at dinner, Dr. Ziegler. If you run into Jesse, don’t tell him I’m here – I want to surprise him.”

With that, Genji disappeared into the bathroom.

Angela felt as though she’d been picked up and tossed around in a tornado that had abruptly vanished. She moved to step out of the room, but Zenyatta held out a hand to her.

“I really must thank you, Dr. Ziegler,” he said.

“Angela,” she said. “You can call me Angela. I’ve told Genji that a thousand times, but he insists on formality.”

Zenyatta laughed, a soft sound which, although robotic, did not sound at all artificial. “That he does,” Zenyatta said. “We have been equals for many years now, but he has not stopped calling me Master. Though I admit, I am vain enough to find it flattering.”

She smiled. She liked this omnic monk. Had she been asked to predict the sort of person that Genji would gravitate towards once he left Blackwatch, Zenyatta would have been at the bottom of her list. But somehow, now, it felt right.

“Thank _you_ , Zenyatta,” she said. “You have no idea – or perhaps you do, if you met him early on in his travels – how… different Genji was when he left us. He has changed immensely, for the better, and I suspect you are responsible.”

Again, she could sense rather than see Zenyatta smile. “As he said, we are not giving him enough credit. I gave him the tools to heal his soul, but he healed it himself.”

“I am glad you gave him the tools, then,” she said.

“And I am glad you gave him a second chance at life,” Zenyatta said. “He is grateful as well.”

Angela didn’t know what to say to that, still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of Genji’s gratefulness any more than she could wrap her head around his current joy. Instead, she simply asked, “Will you also be joining us for dinner later, then?”

She knew omnics could not eat, but she had often seen them join their human friends for the comradery of mealtimes. Genji had almost always avoided the mess hall during his time with Blackwatch, unable to eat and angered at the sight of others doing what he could not, but he had been the one to suggest a group dinner that night. Truly, he had changed.

“Of course,” Zenyatta said. “There is nothing I want more than to meet the people who mean the world to Genji.”


	6. Affection

It was beyond strange to see Genji showing so much genuine emotion. He sat between Jesse and Zenyatta at the largest of the mess hall tables, regaling the other agents with tales of the Shambali monastery. Zenyatta interjected occasionally, dropping in details about the monastery’s history and practices, but Genji was the storyteller. His faceplate remained in place, but that did not stop him from waving his arms animatedly, weaving a rich tale, his voice rising and falling with emotion.

Angela sat across the table, watching him. Her eyes slid to Jesse’s and they shared a wide-eyed stare. They didn’t need to speak to know what the other was thinking: who _was_ this Genji?

Genji wrapped up a story about a prank – a _prank_ , something as jovial and child-like as a _prank_ – that he and Zenyatta had pulled on one of the older monks. He reached over, then, and wound a casual arm around Jesse’s shoulders. Angela saw Jesse’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. Though they had been close, Angela suspected that Genji had never been this affectionate with Jesse, at least not with this level of ease.

“Let’s tell Zenyatta about our first mission together, just the two of us,” Genji said, flicking the brim of Jesse’s hat. “In Hanamura, remember?”

“I…” Jesse coughed, then slid into his easy cowboy charm. “’Course I remember. You slit the throat of every guard in that place before I could even draw my Peacekeeper.”

“In my defense,” Genji said quickly, holding up one arm towards Zenyatta, who’d hummed uncertainly at Jesse’s statement, “they wanted to kill us, first. This was not a senseless killing.”

The Shimada Genji of the past had not worried about senseless killings. Everything was a means to an end, and sometimes he even seemed to relish in the violence of the kill, especially when it involved those with Shimada ties. But now he spoke like a monk, concerned for human lives.

“They didn’t know what hit them, though,” Genji said, slipping back into cockiness. “First time any of them saw a cyborg ninja.”

Angela froze at those words, and she saw Jesse start as well. Genji had never referred to himself as a cyborg before, and although many people had called him such in the early days, behind closed doors, they avoided saying it to his face. Genji had enough trouble accepting his rebuilt body without being reminded of how inhuman it was.

But as Genji and Jesse fleshed out the story of their first mission together, Genji dropped the word  _cyborg_ several more times, slipping it in with humour and ease. He seemed almost delighted by his body now, excitedly mentioning features of his cybernetics that he had only used with reserved stoicism in the past.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about some upgrades for the past few years,” Genji said, and leaned towards Angela across the table. “You think you could make some changes?”

“I… of course,” Angela said. She hadn’t expected this. She’d thought she would have to fight Genji just to give his body a sorely overdue inspection, and here he was _volunteering_ for further modifications.

“Cool,” Genji said. “How do we feel about bringing back the knife ankles?”

* * *

After dinner, Genji and Zenyatta followed Winston to his office – their arrival meant paperwork needed to be filled out and arrangements needed to be made. Angela watched them leave, then turned to see Jesse leaning against a mess hall table a few feet away from her, arms crossed.

“Well,” Jesse said, when their eyes met.

“Well,” Angela agreed.

Jesse pushed away from the table and headed for the door, waving for Angela to follow him. “Let’s go for a walk.”

They crossed empty halls – there were still so few agents here, compared to what had once been – and headed outside. Jesse didn’t speak until they were winding their way along the cliffside outside Watchpoint, being gently buffeted by the cool evening air that blew across the water.

“So, how ’bout this new Genji?” he said.

Angela barked a laugh. “He’s something,” she agreed.

Jesse nodded. He reached up with his arm – his prosthetic one, another piece of Angela’s handiwork, although she’d still been so focused on caring for Genji at the time that she hadn’t fully appreciated the craftsmanship that had gone into it – and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’m happy for him, you know? He seems… so much happier,” Jesse said.

Angela nodded.

“But it’s _weird_ , right?” Jesse exploded. He stopped walking, threw his hands up in frustration. “Right?”

Angela stopped too. “It’s weird,” she agreed.

Of course Angela knew that Genji had always cared about his Overwatch comrades, that he’d been loyal to them and protected them in battle, that he was an awkward jigsaw piece in the makeshift family that Overwatch had carved out together. But he had always been so angry and bitter and cold. To see that he felt true _affection_ for all of them was jarring.

She looked away from Jesse, unable to meet his eyes, and said, “I feel guilty. I should be nothing but happy for Genji. And I am. This is more than I ever could have hoped for him. These years away have done him so much good. But… change is hard no matter the form, isn’t it?”

Jesse reached out, wound an arm around Angela and rubbed her shoulder gently. The gesture reminded her so much of Gabriel that a lump rose in her throat and she found it hard to breathe for a moment. _So much_ had changed.

“It’s always hard,” Jesse agreed. “When I got the recall… I guess a lil part of me thought it would go back to how things were before, you know? Like nothing ever changed. But Gabe and Jack and Ana… and so many others…” He didn’t have to finish the statement. They both basked in all that it implied for a moment. Then he continued, “And then Genji. I thought he wasn’t gonna come back, and then he does, but he’s a whole new guy… Just another reminder that nothing’s the same. And maybe that’s for the best, but it still hurts.”

Angela nodded. She stared out across the water, glittering in the deep orange of sunset. The wind that gusted across the ocean seemed colder now. She shivered, and Jesse shifted his serape so it draped across both their shoulders.

“Why weren’t we enough for him, Jesse?” she asked in a small voice, the question she’d been fighting to keep at the back of her mind all night. “Why couldn’t we be what he needed?”

Jesse continued to rub her shoulder gently and didn’t answer for a long while. Guilt clawed at her throat. It was a terrible thing to say, selfish. Genji did not belong to them. He was allowed to seek happiness wherever it suited him.

“I don’t know,” Jesse said, finally, as if he’d been trying very hard to figure it out. “Lord knows we tried. But we’re just a bunch of soldiers, y’know. Maybe Genji just needed good people.”

Angela swallowed around the guilt in her throat. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose he did.”

* * *

Slowly, they grew used to this new Genji, the way you grow used to anything if it’s around you long enough. Genji and Zenyatta became a fixture at Watchpoint – training outside, socializing in the mess hall, meditating on the cliff’s edge overlooking the water every morning. Zenyatta invited the other agents to join their meditation sessions, offering to lead them through guided Shambali meditation if they needed the help. Only Lena took up the offer, and she was so jittery and hyperactive that she only lasted a few days before politely declining.

Genji sought Angela out specifically to ask her. He leaned in the doorway of the med bay, arms crossed casually.

“I think it would be good for you, Dr. Ziegler,” he said. “There is so much tension in you.”

She busied herself with her clipboard and her paperwork, only glancing up at Genji. She'd stiffened at his words – it felt like a role reversal she hadn’t approved of. After the years she’d spent trying to play counsellor for Genji’s ailing mental health, it made her almost bitter to hear him telling _her_ about _her_ tension and _her_ well-being.

“Would you consider coming out with us, even for one morning? I think you’ll find that Zenyatta’s teaching can be… life changing.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Angela said, and she hoped the bitterness in her voice was not as obvious as it sounded to her ears. She coughed and forced lightness into her voice. “I’ll consider it, Genji. Perhaps another time. I’m quite busy this week. Sorting out medical records for the new agents that Winston has been recruiting.”

She felt Genji’s eyes on her from behind the mask, and she thought he might push the issue.

“I heard Winston wants to recruit that Brazilian DJ,” he said instead. “I never thought I’d see the day that Overwatch recruited pop stars.”

“Overwatch has always had a habit of recruiting… unconventional agents,” Angela said, relaxing at the change of topic.

Genji looked down at himself, shining white and silver and green. He laughed. “Touché.”

It was not just that Genji’s invitation to meditate felt patronizing, felt unjust after all the times he’d refused her mental health advice. It also seemed like a sort of intrusion on something deeply intimate – although they’d invited other agents to join them, the early morning meditation belonged to Genji and Zenyatta.

She found herself, at times, avoiding the two when they were together. Angela had made her peace with omnics years ago, after working with so many kind and caring omnic medics, after seeing how much omnics had suffered at the hands of humans, after realizing how modern medicine benefited from both the tech and the wisdom of omnics.

She had no ill feelings towards omnics in general, and she had no ire with Zenyatta in particular. He was kind and light-hearted and was an impressive healer. She worked with him often in the med bay, sharing tech or showing him the ins and outs of Watchpoint’s medical facilities.

But the easy closeness between Genji and Zenyatta pulled at something in Angela’s stomach, twisted something in the back of Angela’s brain, and she would not allow herself to pull that _something_ out of her subconscious and examine it. Whatever it was left her feeling dirty and guilty, and so she avoided the pair, cyborg and omnic. Although Genji’s body was clearly more human than an omnic’s, they seemed to match too well, seemed to fit together naturally, as if Genji had always been meant to stand beside this omnic.

She drank tea with Fareeha in the evenings, and they danced around topics – around Ana, around Overwatch, around justice, around other ideas that Angela dared not bring to light. She spent more and more time with Jesse, reminiscing without ever going too deep, scratching the surface of their memories of Jack and Gabe without acknowledging the rumours of rogue super soldiers that were beginning to filter into Overwatch’s network.

She treated light training wounds and ran examinations on Winston’s new recruits and kept medical records up to date. When Winston felt confident enough to begin sending agents out on small missions – mostly to seek out information on Talon, that new organization that had popped up over the years that Overwatch had lain dormant – she treated battle wounds and was sent out to the work in the field herself, to stretch her wings and wield her staff. It had been a long time since she had used her gun, and she did not know what to think about how easily it came back to her.

Despite everything that went unsaid, Overwatch began to feel like home again.

And then, Genji brought in another recruit.


	7. Breakdown

Late night had become early morning and Angela was still awake. Over the years she had become more and more of an insomniac, unable to calm her restless mind, unable to stop working. There was always so much to do – lives to care for, medical advances to be made. Never enough time for it all.

As a doctor, she knew how important sleep was to one’s health. She prescribed strict sleeping schedules to her patients with a faint sense of hypocrisy. But if she left her staff gently glowing by her side most nights, bathing her in soft light that kept her rejuvenated and awake enough to focus on her work, maybe she could save one more life, make one more breakthrough. The staff’s energy prevented her from looking tired, too – kept her fresh-faced and youthful-looking, almost eerily so. No one could tell how much she strained her body and her consciousness as long as she masked it behind a picture of perfect health.

She glanced at the clock on the edge of her desk. Almost 5 a.m. Fareeha had stayed up with her until midnight, lounging in the corner of her office and making gentle small talk while Angela sorted through a shipment of anesthetics and biomechanical parts. Had it really been five hours since Fareeha had headed off to bed with a soft, “Don’t stay up too late, Angie”?

The notes on Angela’s desk swam across her eyes. If she went to bed now, she might be able to get almost three hours of sleep before she needed to be back at the med bay for her morning rounds. She stood up and touched her staff, letting it jolt her with a spark of warm energy.

She was halfway out the door when Watchpoint’s lockdown sirens began to screech.

They had run drills for this enough times that Angela didn’t have to think. She was already gripping her staff, and her pistol hung in its holster next to her lab coat on the wall. She slung the holster around her waist, clipping it in place as she ran through empty, echoing halls towards the meeting point outside Winston’s quarters.

Already awake when the sirens went off, Angela was one of the first to arrive. Winston was there already, and Lena blinked into the large, echoing chamber of the Watchpoint entry room just as Angela rounded the corner.

Standing between them, hands raised above his head, bow and arrows at his feet, was a small, broad-shouldered Japanese man. A blue dragon tattoo snaked up his left arm and across his chest – a Shimada dragon.

Winston and Lena’s weapons were already trained on the man, careful but threatening. His head was tilted slightly forward, a submissive stance. Angela’s hands shook as she whipped her pistol from its holster, aimed it directly between his eyes. Her gun was not especially powerful, but she was close enough that one shot would be all she needed.

He lifted his dark, narrow eyes to meet hers. She had never seen him in the flesh before, but she _knew_ who this man was.

“Shimada Hanzo,” she said. Her voice did not shake. She steadied her hand. He did not move. “Murderer.” At that word, he flinched. A visceral satisfaction tugged inside of her. Good. He should feel shame.

Angela did not turn to see Genji enter the room from behind her, but she heard him, the familiar near-silent patter of his silicon-padded feet against the metal flooring.

“Genji,” Winston said, his voice low and serious. “Is this your brother?”

There was a pause, and had Angela trusted the tattooed man in front of her enough to look away from him, she would have turned to Genji, tried to decipher his body language in that moment. But she did not look away. She waited, and after a moment, Genji said, “Yes.”

That was all the confirmation that Angela needed. She squeezed the trigger of her pistol, felt as though the world were suddenly moving in slow motion as Hanzo ducked, her shot missing him by millimetres. She moved to shoot again, already lining up her next shot, finger heavy on the trigger, but there were hard metal arms holding her back, tearing the gun from her hand. She was distantly aware of herself screaming as Genji pulled her back, as Winston grabbed Hanzo by the shoulder and yanked him away from Angela’s line of sight.

“He’s a _murderer_ ,” Angela spat. She had the dignity not to claw and spit and kick at Genji as he restrained her, but she shook in his hold. “He _killed_ you. How did he get into Watchpoint? Why is he here?”

“I invited him,” Genji said, his echoing metallic voice close to her ear. “He came to Watchpoint at my request.”

Though the lockdown sirens still screeched through the base, and more agents were thundering into the room, weapons ready, it felt as though a breathless silence had descended over them. No one said a word for several long moments.

Then Winston said, “Lena, Genji, help me escort Shimada Hanzo to the holding cells, where we can have a calm conversation. Reinhardt, will you end the lockdown and let all agents know it was a false alarm?”

Reinhardt, who had run into the room moments ago with his hammer balanced over his pajama-clad shoulder, gave Winston a nod and a salute before disappearing into Winston’s quarters to give Athena the end-lockdown command.

“And Angela…” Winston’s eyes were heavy with concern as he looked at her. She hated this, hated that he was concerned about _her_ and not about the murderer whose shoulder he still gripped with one large hand. “Maybe Zenyatta can help you calm down. I’ll come find you as soon as we have this situation sorted out.”

Winston’s patronizing tone grated at her, but she said nothing as Genji hesitantly released her and joined Winston and Lena at Hanzo’s side. Genji had taken her gun, and although she normally hated that tool of violence, in this moment she desperately wanted it back. She said nothing, though, just nodded at them before following a silent Zenyatta out of the room. Her heart pounded in her throat at the idea of leaving Genji and Hanzo behind, _together_.

But Genji had invited Hanzo here. It had been Genji’s request. She felt as though she’d missed a step while walking down a staircase – that fleeting feeling of falling, when your stomach drops nearly to your toes, except the feeling would not go away.

“Perhaps we could go outside to meditate,” Zenyatta said, after several long minutes of silent, aimless wandering through Watchpoint’s echoing halls.

Angela nodded, followed him outside, to the cliffside where he and Genji meditated each morning. She had still not joined them, and after a while, Genji had stopped asking.

Zenyatta settled into the lotus position, sinking low towards the ground, though he still hovered a few inches above it. A patch of grass beside him was flattened and worn, presumably the spot where Genji sat to meditate each morning. Angela settled herself into that smooth, worn space. The sun had not risen yet, but the sky held that dusky pre-sunrise colour. The wind that blew across the ocean buffeted her hair gently, made her shiver. She did not have the flexibility or the skill to sit in lotus position, but she crossed her legs and rested her hands gently in her lap.

“You love him,” Zenyatta said.

Angela started. “Who?” she asked, though of course she knew who.

“Genji.” Zenyatta’s expressionless face was turned towards the endless waters, his body still. The glowing orbs that surrounded him rose and fell in a gentle pattern around his form. If he had proper eyes, Angela suspected that they would be serenely closed.

“I care very deeply for him,” Angela said. She found herself choosing her words carefully, although she wasn’t sure what she was trying to mask. “He is a dear friend, and a person I fought very hard to keep alive.”

“This is why you do not trust his brother,” Zenyatta said.

Angela’s hands went rigid in her lap. The pounding in her throat that had begun to subside started again with vengeance, making her feel sick.

“You didn’t see what Hanzo did to Genji,” she said, her voice low. “I’m the only one here who saw… who saw the grotesque _monstrosity_ of Hanzo’s murder. He did not just kill his brother. He made him _suffer_. Before an _audience_. He…”

She realized that she was crying, shaking. She had never forgotten the sight of Genji, barely alive, a bloody mess on the Shimada mansion floor. The gruesome scene had been nearly unbearable at the time, when Genji was a faceless boy she didn’t know. The starkness of that image had only sharpened with time, as Genji became not just another victim of an honour killing but a _friend._

That image had haunted her nightmares for years. Shimada Hanzo had haunted her nightmares for years. Seeing him at Watchpoint was a nightmare incarnate.

“What Hanzo did to Genji was terrible,” Zenyatta said, his voice always so even and calm. “But Hanzo was as much a victim of the Shimada clan as Genji. Groomed from birth to be the kind of man who would murder his brother, unflinching. But he was not as unflinching as they’d hoped. He left the clan that had groomed him and spent years trying to avenge the brother he thought he’d killed.”

“Is this what you told Genji?” Angela asked through gritted teeth. “Is this how you convinced him to bring his brother here the way he brought you?”

Zenyatta shook his head, as gentle and slow as the rest of him. “No,” Zenyatta said. “These are the things Genji told me. When he came to me, he hated himself, and he hated his brother. But as he grew to love himself, his love for his brother grew, as well.”

Angela said nothing. She did not know how to feel, what to believe. Sometimes, in her worst moments, Angela felt as though the omnic monks had brainwashed Genji, had spun him into something of their own creation. That feeling had never been stronger than it was in this moment.

“Perhaps you won’t believe me, but initially, I did not want Genji to seek out his brother. I, too, was… angry with Hanzo. Angry that anyone could hurt someone so dear to me. I am not without flaws or biases.” He laughed, and it always startled Angela how real that laugh sounded, how human. “But Genji has forgiven Hanzo, and it is not my place to stand in the way of that forgiveness.”

Angela stared out across the water. “He’s… changed so much,” she said eventually, unable to express the fullness of her thoughts in any other way.

Zenyatta hummed. “Yes,” he said. “He has.”

He reached, gently, towards Angela. He did not touch her, but he motioned for her to turn towards him, until she was looking into the soft glow of his forehead array.

“Do you blame me?” Zenyatta asked.

“For what?” Angela asked, cagey, uncertain.

“For changing him. For taking him away from you.”

Angela wanted desperately to say no, to not be as petty and selfish as that, but she found she couldn’t speak around the tightness in her throat.

“Did you love him?”

“As a friend,” Angela said, soft and low.

“As something more?”

She looked away. “I don’t know,” she said, and it was the most honest thing she’d said to Zenyatta. She did not know.

For the most part, Angela avoided romance. She’d had a boyfriend in high school and a girlfriend in college, but they both felt so long ago, parts of a childhood long forgotten. She’d been on casual dates set up by mutual friends or with nice people she’d met in medical school. But never anything serious.

She lived for medicine and for her comrades. Medicine left her with little time for anything else – already she sacrificed sleep for her job. And she was afraid of having a relationship too deep with any of her colleagues – though there had always been plenty of dating between Overwatch agents, she could not bring herself to bear the risk. She’d seen Jack and Gabe’s relationship rise and fall disastrously, had seen many others have their work lives become hell after a bad breakup – or worse, after a field death.

She thought of every soft, gentle moment she’d shared with Fareeha, with Jesse, with Genji… Whether or not she wanted those moments to become something more, she would not risk it.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t know if a part of me wanted… something _more_ , with Genji. Perhaps I did.” The honesty of her words scared her, but suddenly she could not stop. “But above all I wanted desperately to help him, and I could not. I saved his body, but you, Zenyatta, you saved his life.”

Zenyatta reached out, then, and took Angela’s hands in his own. “No,” he said. “We both saved his life.”

The metal of Zenyatta’s fingers was cool, but not cold – his body was likely internally regulated to remain at a human-compatible temperature. Angela found herself gripping them desperately, a lifeline she couldn’t let go of.

“He always spoke very fondly of you, you know,” Zenyatta said. “About how much you’d done for him, how much you cared for him.”

Angela hiccupped. She was no longer crying, but her eyes felt raw and puffy. “I honestly thought he hated me,” she said. “And he would have every right to. In some ways, I was as much a villain in his story as Hanzo. I suppose it’s only fair that he forgive Hanzo, if he’s forgiven me.”

“Angela.” Zenyatta squeezed her fingers. “In Genji’s eyes, the only villain in his story was himself. He hated himself, but it was easier for him to project that onto you. And onto me, and onto Hanzo, and onto the world. But just as his hatred radiated from his core to the entire world, so does his love now. Genji is the most loving person I have ever met.”

Angela laughed slightly, her throat still tight from crying. It was hard, sometimes, to find the old Genji in this new, happier Genji, but it made sense when Zenyatta put it that way – Genji was always all-encompassing, zero or one hundred, whether that was hatred or love, depression or joy.

Blue light flashed to their left, and Angela and Zenyatta turned to see Lena blink into the space beside them. She smiled a careful smile, perhaps afraid that Angela would begin screaming and fighting again. Already Angela regretted her breakdown, could not bear the embarrassment of knowing her friends had seen her at her most undone. But she pushed those thoughts aside, carefully compartmentalized them in the back of her brain, and smiled up at Lena.

“Angie,” Lena said. “Winston’s finished interrogating Genji and Hanzo on the situation. He’s… decided to make Hanzo an agent.”

Tracer said the words carefully, as if afraid of Angela’s reaction. Angela’s insides turned to ice. She felt sweat prickle her arms and the back of her neck, a visceral reaction to the news, but she fought to remain calm, unwilling to repeat her embarrassing display from earlier.

“Winston can tell you all the details of his decision, if you want to go talk to him. He said you deserve to know.” Lena offered a hand and Angela took it, rising to her feet.

“Thank you, Lena,” she said. “But it’s alright. This is Winston’s decision, and I will not fight him on it. If Hanzo needs medical attention, I will handle it professionally. Beyond that, I don’t need to know.”

Lena frowned and tapped her fingers together with nervous energy. “Are you sure?” she asked.

Angela nodded. She turned to Zenyatta and bowed to him awkwardly, unsure of the customs of Nepali omnics. “Thank you for your kindness, Zenyatta,” she said. “This was very nice. I may join you for meditation in the future, if the offer is still open.”

“Of course,” Zenyatta said warmly. “It will always be open.”

She nodded again and left before Lena or Zenyatta could say anything else, striding quickly back to the base. With Lena’s blink and Zenyatta’s ability to float over any rocky obstacle, they could catch up to her quickly, but neither followed.

When she reached her room, she locked the door, dropped her staff to the floor with a clatter, and crawled into bed fully clothed, her chest aching.


	8. Intervention

“Right, we’re getting you out of here.”

Angela looked up from the medical forms on her desk to see Jesse standing in her office doorway, one arm leaning against the frame.

“This is an intervention,” Fareeha said, poking her head into the room beside Jesse.

“An intervention?” Angela asked, wary. She put down her pen and eyed her friends carefully.

“Yup,” Jesse said.

He and Fareeha crossed the office with long strides, and before Angela could react, they’d each grabbed her under one arm.

“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked as two sets of strong arms lifted her bodily from her seat. She tugged in their grasp, half laughing and half concerned.

“You haven’t been anywhere but the med bay and your office in at least a week,” Fareeha said. Jesse let go of Angela’s arm long enough for Fareeha to sweep her up, bridal style. “Have you even been to the mess hall this week?” she said.

“I– I keep some food in my office,” Angela protested.

“What, instant ramen and power bars?” Jesse said. He waved a finger in Angela’s face as Fareeha totted her out of the office and into the hallway. “Thought you were a doctor, Angela. Gotta take care of yourself.”

“We’re taking you to the mess hall to eat, and then you’re going to bed,” Fareeha said firmly. “We talked to Winston and he said the other medics will keep the med bay staffed all evening.”

“At least let me walk there myself,” Angela said, kicking in Fareeha’s arms, but there was a breathless laughter in her throat.

After Hanzo’s arrival, Angela had thrown herself even more deeply into her work, avoiding the common areas of Watchpoint. Hanzo was not a very social man – he stayed out of the way and spoke little, his voice stiff and formal when he did speak – but Angela could not stomach the risk of running into him. She didn’t really want to run into anyone else, either, not after her violent outburst at Hanzo’s arrival. Not after the uncomfortable self-reflection she’d experienced with Zenyatta.

Jesse and Fareeha – and Tracer and Torbjorn and Genji and several others – had tried to gently pry her from her office on more than one occasion in the past few weeks, but it was not difficult to turn them away when she was busy – and she was always busy. She could always be busy when she needed to be.

She couldn’t help but be endeared by Jesse and Fareeha’s overdramatic intervention, though, and it felt as though a small part of her chest loosened as they crossed into the mess hall, Angela walking between the two of them once Fareeha had let her down.

Hanzo was not in the hall, which helped ease her. Only Reinhardt and Torbjorn sat in the mostly-empty mess hall, and a few of the newer recruits that Angela did not know as well.

Reinhardt waved them over with one large hand, his face split with a wide grin. Torbjorn gave Angela a curt nod before going back to the stew he was eating.

“You been hiding from us, Ziegler?” Reinhardt asked as she and Jesse and Fareeha joined them at their table.

“I have been busy,” she said. “Lots of new recruits. Making upgrades to Genji’s suit and Jesse’s arm. Researching Talon anti-venoms.”

“Always so busy,” Reinhardt said, shaking his head. “You must make time for your own self.” He ruffled Angela’s hair and she felt so _young_ in that moment, so cared for, and she had the ridiculous urge to cry.

“I’m hungry,” she said instead, clapping her hands. “I will go grab-”

“No,” Fareeha said, pushing Angela back down as she began to stand up. “You sit down and _socialize_. I’ll go get you some food.”

Fareeha stood. Jesse was on her heels, telling her that she had _terrible_ taste in food and he’d make sure she brought back something edible. She punched him in the shoulder, not gently, and they both laughed as they disappeared into the kitchen.

Though the three of them were close in age, in the early days of Overwatch, when Fareeha was still just a teenager and Jesse was barely an adult, those two had had a closeness that Angela had never quite fit into. They were like family, Ana’s kid and Gabe’s surrogate son, teasing and supporting each other like siblings.

Angela was different – a medical prodigy, head of the Overwatch medic team when she was barely a young adult herself, too busy to be a kid with them. And always fudging her age – first pretending she was older than she was to be accepted into medical school early, and then using herself as a test subject for her nanoparticles often enough that she had looked younger than her age for decades. There were times when even she couldn’t remember her real age, and it made her feel separate from the younger Overwatch members, all those years ago.

“You examined that new Shimada boy yet?” Torbjorn asked, looking up from his stew.

Angela stiffened instantly. She didn’t think Torbjorn was antagonizing her – he was just abrasive in that way, bringing up what was on his mind regardless of who he was talking to.

“Yes,” she said. “I gave him a routine examination as Winston requested.”

She had. It had been stiff and painfully formal, neither of them speaking beyond what was necessary, barely looking each other in the eye. She could not decide if Hanzo was afraid of her after her breakdown or if he was disdainful towards her. It did not matter. She was a professional. She had examined him, and filled out his medical forms, and sent him away, and she had not seen him since. Only in her nightmares, when she slept in short and fitful bursts.

Torbjorn shook his head. “You see his ankles?” he said. “Kid has weak ankles. Don’t trust those ankles in combat. He makes one misstep, someone grabs his leg? _Snap_.”

Torbjorn’s imitation of a bone snapping sounded disturbingly realistic, and Reinhardt interrupted him quickly.

“McCree’s been spending a lot of time with him,” Reinhardt said. “Pulling him out of his shell a little. Guess he has a touch when it comes to Shimada boys, eh?”

Torbjorn gave a gruff laugh at that, and she imagined they were all thinking about Genji, before. Though his turmoil had been fierier than Hanzo’s, both brothers shared the same haughty, stoic reservedness, pain hidden behind terse rudeness. She hated how familiar it made Hanzo seem.

Jesse and Fareeha returned then, both carrying trays laden with food. Fareeha slid a tray in front of Angela and sat down beside her, nudging her affectionately with her shoulder.

“Stew, left-over fried rice, some of those really good grapes Lena bought, and cake,” Fareeha said, listing off the menu. “It’s pretty late so the choices were slim, but eat up.”

“The grapes really are good,” Jesse said, reaching over Fareeha to snag a couple off of Angela’s tray. Fareeha slapped his hand away.

Angela said a quiet thank you and started to eat. Truthfully, it had been a while since she’d eaten anything other than protein bars and meal-replacement shakes, and the warmth of the thick, meaty stew was welcome.

“McCree!” Reinhardt said, leaning towards Jesse, a teasing twinkle in his right eye. “We were just saying. How is your _boyfriend_?”

Angela nearly choked on her stew. Reinhardt was clearly teasing, trying to get a rise out of the younger agent, but the way Jesse’s face went almost immediately beet red made Angela’s stomach clench.

“Not my boyfriend,” Jesse drawled, but his red face betrayed his casual tone. “Can’t say he’s not attractive-” Jesse’s eyes flicked to Angela, almost an apology, “-but Hanzo’s got a stick so far up his ass I don’t think he has room to be _anybody’s_ boyfriend.”

“Gross,” Fareeha deadpanned, and rolled her eyes at Jesse.

“Are we talking about the stick up my brother’s ass?”

Angela started and turned to see Genji striding across the mess hall towards their table, Zenyatta at his side, his ever-present companion.

“Because believe me,” Genji said as she sat down beside Jesse, “he was born with it stuck up there.”

The easy, teasing way Genji spoke of his brother still jarred Angela. She focused her eyes on her tray and shoveled food into her mouth, not wanting to be a part of this conversation.

“Was he this bad when he was a kid?” Jesse asked.

“If not worse. Why do you think I was such a wild kid? Had to make up for Hanzo being such a stick in the mud.”

Eventually, finally, the conversation shifted away from Hanzo. They talked about recent missions, about celebrity gossip, about Genji’s high score in a video game he and Fareeha were obsessed with. Angela found herself drawn into the simplicity of the conversation – so inane, so light-hearted, so _normal_. It was like a balm on Angela’s brain. Despite everything, they could still be normal.

Reinhardt and Torbjorn left eventually – _too old for staying up late_ , Torbjorn said – and Jesse left reluctantly shortly after, needing to head out early the next morning for a reconnaissance mission.

“I’m on that mission tomorrow, too,” Fareeha said, watching Jesse leave the room with a wave and a smile. She turned to Angela and squeezed her shoulder. “Want to head to bed? I’m sure you need the rest.”

“Soon,” Angela said. She was feeling rejuvenated from the food and the socializing. It was easy, when she was locked away in her office, to forget how much she needed moments like these, to relax, to drown out her own incessant anxieties in light-hearted conversations. She didn’t want to sleep quite yet.

“Okay,” Fareeha said, although she sounded unconvinced as she stood up from the table.

“Do not worry,” Genji said. “I’ll make sure she goes to bed within an hour. Not back to her office.” He placed his hand over his heart, swearing it.

Fareeha laughed. “Okay. I trust you.” She shot finger guns in Genji’s direction as she left the room, and Genji returned the gesture. Angela rolled her eyes, but she felt the warmth of affection roll over her.

Two freshly recruited agents, Hana Song and Lúcio Correia dos Santos, had been sitting at a corner table of the mess hall all evening, sharing a pair of earbuds as they watched something on an open laptop. Zenyatta had meandered over to them a little while ago, intending to invite them to join the larger table, but he had become enthralled in whatever they were watching and now floated between them in front of the laptop, leaving Angela and Genji alone at their table.

Genji stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair, crossing his ankles on the table. It was such a relaxed, boyish pose that Angela laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” Genji asked. His voice was so light. Years ago, he would have snapped that question, voice full of venom and accusation.

“You,” Angela said honestly. “You’re so… light.” Perhaps it was tiredness, or the emotional high of good friends and good conversation, but the words came easily.

“I’m several hundred pounds of solid metal, even with the carbon fiber, and you know that,” Genji said.

“You know what I mean, Shimada Genji,” she said, waving a finger at him.

She could not see his face behind the mask of his suit, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

He swung his legs off the table so he could tip his chair forward and lean towards Angela, conspiratorial.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to say,” he said, his voice full of teasing mischief. “I never thanked you for the robodick.”

Angela felt her face turn instantly crimson. “Genji!”

He laughed and leaned back, crossing his legs on the table again. “We’ve made good use of it,” he said, waving idly towards Zenyatta, who still hovered between Hana and Lúcio. “Truly, thank you.”

Angela spluttered and redirected the conversation, asked a laughing Genji to tell her about something that was _not_ his sex life, but somewhere inside it warmed her to know that Genji appreciated that specific aspect of his cybernetic anatomy. The higher-ups had initially rejected her request to replace Genji’s reproductive system along with his other damaged organs.

“What purpose would it serve?” asked Captain Molina, liaison between Overwatch’s financial department and their medical research department. “We are investing incredibly large sums into your project – we cannot afford to spend on things that are not essential to Shimada’s functioning.”

“Quality of life,” Angela had said firmly. “It would bring him quality of life. We are rebuilding a human body, not a weapon.”

Captain Molina hesitated momentarily, shuffling papers on his desk. Something prickled up the back of Angela’s neck – fear, perhaps, or dread.

Then he said, “Many people have lived perfectly happy, sexless live.”

Angela nodded. “Of course. And if that is how Genji chooses to live, that would be his choice. But I want to give him that choice. With all due respect, Captain, I am not an armorist. I am not building you the weapon you desire. I am building Mr. Shimada the body he deserves.”

Captain Molina did not look pleased, but he told her that he would reconvene with the financial council and reconsider her request. A week later, she had approval.

And now, years later, Genji was thanking her for it.

They continued their light-hearted conversation, Genji teasing her with careful gentleness, until Zenyatta floated back to their table, clapping his hands with delight.

“What were you watching, Master?” Genji asked, turning to Zenyatta. He reached for the omnic’s shoulder and pulled him closer, a casual gesture of affection.

“Have you ever seen a panda sneeze, Genji?” Zenyatta asked, positively thrilled.

Genji laughed. “You were watching animal videos?”

“There is an island entirely populated by tiny cats and tiny deer, Genji! I would like to visit it.”

Genji pressed his forehead to the side of Zenyatta’s face, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Perhaps someday, Master.”

Zenyatta gave them a summary of the animal videos Hana and Lúcio had delighted him with, then patted Genji softly on the head. “I believe it’s time for my evening meditations, and then I will be powering down for the night. Will you be joining me, my student?”

“Just have to escort Dr. Ziegler to her room to make sure she doesn’t get lost on the way and end up in her office again,” Genji said. He stood, and offered a hand to Angela. She took it, felt the smooth synthetic palm and the cool, temperature-regulated armour.

As his doctor, Angela’s hands had touched every inch of Genji’s body, inside and out, more intimately and gruesomely than she sometimes cared to remember. But she relished the moments when they touched not as doctor and patient but as friends, human contact full of easy affection. The old Genji had violently shied away from human touch, but this new Genji was overtly affectionate, and it was still novel to Angela.

Zenyatta headed for the room he shared with Genji, and Genji lead Angela through the halls back to her room, an arm looped loosely around her shoulders.


	9. Change

“Here we are,” Genji said, when they stopped outside her room, all too soon. “Promise me you will sleep, okay? Pharah will have my skin if you still look exhausted tomorrow.”

Angela laughed and nodded. “Of course. Thank you.” She turned to open her door, paused with her hand on the keypad. “You’ve all been so nice to me tonight,” she said. “More than I deserve.”

She felt Genji’s hands on her shoulders. Gently, he turned her around, so she was looking up into the green glow of his visor.

“You deserve kindness, Dr. Ziegler,” he said. His voice had dropped low with seriousness. “You worry too much about others and not enough about yourself.”

Her laugh came out in a bitter bark. “You give me too much credit,” she said. “I worry about others to ease my conscience. Pure selfishness.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, shockingly true to her ears. She was suddenly afraid to continue this conversation, afraid that if she continued to run her mouth she would break down again, a repeat of the Hanzo scene in the middle of the dormitory hallway.

“I should go to bed,” she said quickly, interrupting Genji before he could tell her she was not selfish, that she was being ridiculous. She punched her passcode into the keypad and her door slid open with a soft hiss.

Genji seemed to hesitate as she stepped into her room, shifting his weight from foot to foot. She opened her mouth to say goodnight, to send him on his way, but quickly he said, “Could I come in? For a moment? Just to make sure you are really preparing to go to sleep and not pulling out some paperwork.”

She hesitated, her hand on the door. Then she stepped back, let him inside. At least if she broke down, it would be in the privacy of her room.

The door hissed shut behind Genji. Angela’s heart leaped into the back of her throat. She realized that, in all the years they’d known each other, this was the first time that Genji had been in her room. Few people came in here, really. She spent so little time here that even Fareeha and Jesse usually came to her office or to the med bay to pester her or keep her company.

She stepped into her small washroom but left the door open, watching Genji out of the corner of her eye as she pulled a hair-tie out of her hair and began to brush out the snarled tangles. Genji wandered around her room, snooping gently. He paused in front of the small collection of photographs on her dresser – several of the team from the early Overwatch days, a few from her time as a traveling medic before the recall. There was a photo of Genji, bundled up in the snows of Nepal, one of the few photos he’d sent her along with his letters over the years.

“Your room is not very decorated,” Genji said, coming to stand in the bathroom doorway once he’d finished snooping through her few possessions.

She shrugged. “I do not spend much time in here,” she said. “And the recall was only months ago. Not a lot of time to decorate.”

Genji laughed, metallic but natural. Like Zenyatta. “You should see our room,” he said. “For a pair of wandering monks, we’ve amassed quite a few material possessions.”

It was strange to hear Genji refer to himself as a monk. Although in many ways he now behaved like one, it was such a stark contrast to who he’d been before.

Angela set down her hairbrush and drummed her fingers on the edge of the sink, looking at Genji over her shoulder in the mirror.

“Is it… did you forgive Hanzo because of the monks?” she asked. “Did they teach you that… that you had to forgive?” She was not sure how to phrase her question. _Did they brainwash you with religion? With promises of a golden after-life if you gave up all your anger and your grudges in this world?_

Genji paused. He shifted his weight. Such a small action, but with his face covered, his body language spoke volumes.

Then he reached up and unclasped his facemask. It came away with a faint hiss, and he set it gently on the counter beside Angela’s hand. She still watched him in the mirror, not turning to face him, but now she could see his scarred face, the glow of his crimson eyes.

It had been a while since she’d seen his face, not since his last examination. Though in most ways, Genji seemed more at peace with his body than he had ever been, he still kept his face hidden almost all the time. Perhaps out of habit, or convenience – or perhaps there were still insecurities that haunted him. Angela did not think it was her place to ask.

“For years, I could not find Hanzo,” Genji said slowly, his eyes downcast, his expression serious. “I searched desperately, but he was elusive. When I left Overwatch, I traveled to the Shimada mansion on the anniversary of my death – out of nostalgia, perhaps, or an attempt at acceptance.”

Angela’s chest clenched. Images of her single visit to the Shimada mansion flashed behind her eyes – she could not imagine returning to that place on the anniversary of Genji's massacre.

“When I arrived, I found my brother, praying for _me_ , the man he’d killed. I wanted to kill him, but I could not do it. I wanted to talk to him, but I could not do that, either.”

Genji had settled into the lilt of storytelling – he’d become a good storyteller, learned at Zenyatta’s knee how to weave a tale.

“I returned every year on the anniversary of my murder, and every year Hanzo was there. Every year I tried to kill him, or to talk to him, and every year I could not. As the years advanced, I wanted more and more to talk to him, and less and less to kill him. Slowly, as I came to accept who I’d become, I came to forgive my brother.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Genji’s mouth. He flicked his eyes upwards, his gaze meeting Angela’s in the mirror’s reflection.

“When Winston sent out the recall, I decided, finally, to make myself known to Hanzo. I wanted him by my side once more. I wanted him to join _our_ side in this war. And although it took him a little while to come around, eventually, he accepted my offer.”

Angela tried to imagine it, this meeting between estranged brothers, and she found that she could not picture it – Genji’s rage turned to forgiveness, and Hanzo, a monstrous murderer turned grieving brother.

“How did he react?” Angela asked. “When he found out you were still alive?”

Genji’s eyes softened, a far-away look. “I think the shock nearly killed him,” Genji said. “There is a part of me that is less kind, that is still vindictive, and that part of me enjoyed torturing him a little bit with the surprise. But mostly, I am glad that he accepted my offer, and that he is here, and that he may one day forgive himself.”

Angela’s hands clenched on the edge of the sink. Until now, a part of her had still questioned whether Genji had truly forgiven his brother. She’d thought maybe it was some sort of test of faith, a training exercise in inner peace – if he could stand to see the sight of his murderer every day, then he had truly achieved enlightenment, or whatever it was the Shambali sought. But his words were full of truth, and of love.

“How?” Angela asked softly. She turned from the mirror to look directly into Genji’s eyes, soft red in the dim bathroom lighting. “How can you still love him? He killed you.”

Genji shook his head. He reached out and cupped Angela’s cheek with one cool synthetic palm. It was the gentlest gesture she’d ever received from him, and she leaned into his touch without thinking.

“He did not kill me,” Genji said. “For I am still alive.”

Angela squeezed her eyes shut, willed herself not to cry. She had cried too much recently. “You were nearly dead.”

“But I did not die,” Genji said. “Because of you.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a dry sob.

“I hope that one day you too can find forgiveness in your heart,” Genji said. His thumb brushed softly under her eyelid, wiping a tear she’d tried hard not to shed.

“For you, Genji, I will try,” she said around the weight in her throat. “But I do not know if I will ever be able to forgive your brother. I am not as good a person as you.”

She opened her eyes to see Genji shaking his head, eyes closed.

“I am not asking you to forgive my brother,” Genji said. He opened his eyes. “That is your choice, not mine. I am asking you to forgive yourself.”

She blinked. He reached out with his other hand and squeezed her fingers.

“You cannot keep holding onto all of this guilt, Angela,” he said.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sound of him using her real name.

“I…” She squeezed his hand, hard metal against soft skin. “I used to think I was a hero, Genji. An angel sent to save people from death and pain. But everything is so much more complicated than that. I am not a hero just because I’ve saved lives.”

“It is true,” Genji said, “that the world is complicated, and it is not a simple division of heroes and villains. We are all just humans. Humans and omnics. People. People who struggle through the world and make a thousand different choices every day, never sure if they are good or bad. Never sure if good and bad even exist at all.”

Angela sniffed. “You really are a monk, aren’t you?”

Genji laughed softly. “Only a novice,” he said. He reached both hands up to cup her face, smoothed her hair back, rested his palms on her shoulders. “The weight of the guilt you carry serves no one. It will eat you up inside, but it will not bring back my old body. It will not reverse my traumas, and it will not reverse yours. Let it go, Angela. The future is ever changing, but it will be better if we step into it lightly, without the baggage of the past.”

She sniffed, wiped messy tears from her face with the palm of her hand. “I’ll try,” she said. “I can’t promise a transformation overnight, but I will try.”

He nodded, scarred lips stretched into a wide grin. “I would not expect you to change overnight. But perhaps you can meditate on it?”

“That sounds nice,” Angela said. “Tomorrow morning, on the cliffside?”

“Of course,” Genji said. “And every morning after that.”

She reached out then, wound her arms around his back, and pulled him tightly to her chest. His arms tightened around her shoulders. They hugged, a long, quiet, perfectly comfortable hug. Genji smelled clean and metallic, but pleasantly so. She felt as though she had been waiting for this moment for years, perhaps since she’d first seen Genji’s body on the floor of the Shimada mansion. She leaned into the hug, boneless, and let the strong body she’d built for Genji support them both.

Angela knew that more change was coming. Winston was seeking to recruit rogue vigilantes Shrike and Soldier: 76, following the rumours of their operations. No one dared say it out loud, afraid of jinxes, afraid to hope too much, but they all had their suspicions about the true identities of those vigilantes. And there were the rumours of Talon agent Reaper’s possible past connection to Overwatch, rumours of Widowmaker’s identity, rumours of the dangerous intel Sombra might hold. Talon was closing in, and Overwatch’s broken past was racing to catch up to them as well. Nothing was safe, and nothing was certain.

But in this moment, this single instant in time, Angela felt at peace. And perhaps that was all she needed – a single moment of peace to build upon, to begin constructing a lighter future for herself. Perhaps Angela, too, could change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be an epilogue, and then this fic will be coming to its end! Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with it every week - your comments have been so nice! I'm glad you've enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	10. Epilogue

Hanzo hissed sharply between clenched teeth, tensing as Angela pulled the needle through his skin. She’d offered him a local anesthetic when he’d sat down to have the jagged gash in his side sewn up, but he’d refused with a curt shake of his head.

“I can still administer the anesthetic if this is too painful,” she said, her voice carefully neutral.

“No,” he said between gritted teeth. “It is fine.”

She fought not to roll her eyes as she tugged on the thick thread. “You Shimadas,” she said. “Too tough for your own good.” Almost immediately, Angela regretted her words – they were an invitation to have a larger conversation, when her policy with Hanzo was to keep everything to a bare minimum.

Although she’d slowly become more comfortable with Hanzo since her conversation with Genji, the two of them still generally avoided each other, and Angela always donned a careful mask of professionalism when she had to treat Hanzo. Neither acknowledged that she had, for all intents and purposes, tried to kill him the night he arrived. Neither acknowledged that Hanzo seemed all too calm, all too accepting, in the face of death.

He made a noise in the back of his throat, and she wasn’t sure if it was laughter or a sound of pain.

“Did Genji…” Hanzo hesitated, seemed unsure of the words he was looking for. “How was he? When you… saved him?”

Memories flooded Angela. Genji on the brink of death. Genji awakening in furious pain. Genji trying again and again to die.

“I think you should ask him that,” Angela said. Partly, she wanted to avoid having this conversation with Hanzo. But it was also an invasion of Genji’s privacy, to tell Hanzo about Genji’s darkest moments. If Genji wanted Hanzo to know how much he’d suffered, he would tell him, but doctor-patient confidentiality prevented Hanzo from hearing it from Angela’s mouth.

Hanzo hung his head and breathed unevenly as Angela continued to stitch him up. It wasn’t a deep wound – just deep enough to need stitches, but barely. Not life-threatening. It was long, though, and ragged. He’d been at the edges of an explosion during a mission and a piece of shrapnel had caught him in the side.

“You should wear more protection on missions,” Angela said. “Even light armour would have prevented this.”

“I need my full range of motion to shoot effectively,” Hanzo said.

Angela frowned. “They make very flexible, versatile armour these days,” she said. “And I cannot believe that every bow-wielding Shimada assassin went on missions half-naked.”

Hanzo pursed his lips, tensed as the needle entered his skin once again. “My choice of attire is… not traditional for a Shimada assassin, I will admit,” he said.

“Why?” Angela asked. “Knowing you, I can’t imagine it’s simply an aesthetic choice.” She hadn’t meant to fall into conversation with him, and yet here she was, asking him about his fashion choices.

She hoped Genji would be proud of her.

“I…” Hanzo looked away from her, his eyes focusing on the med bay wall over her shoulder. “I suppose I felt I didn’t deserve protection in battle.”

Angela’s hands stilled over Hanzo’s stitches. She saw his face harden, his lips pull down, as if he regretted his words.

“Anyways, I’ve grown accustomed to this attire, and-”

“You really are like Genji,” Angela said softly. She still remembered, vividly, how Genji had thrown himself into battle after battle with no regard for his own safety, not actively trying to kill himself but absolutely not trying to keep himself alive.

Hanzo’s eyes slid shut. Angela pulled the needle through the last few stitches and tied off the end of the thread.

“He told me,” Hanzo said, as Angela wiped away blood with cotton soaked in disinfectant. “He told me some of what happened when he first came to Overwatch, though I suspect he softened the truth. He… was not happy to be alive, back then. That much I gathered.”

“No,” Angela said softly, swiping cotton against red skin. “He was not.”

Hanzo made a strangled sound and she pulled her hand away, thinking she’d hurt him. But he’d buried his face in one hand and she thought he might be crying, or at least trying very hard not to.

“I don’t deserve any of this,” Hanzo said.

His voice was so low, and muffled by his hand, that Angela almost couldn’t hear him. A part of her felt like she shouldn’t be witnessing this, that she was looking too far into a private part of Hanzo’s psyche. But she did not think she should leave him like this, so she sat, hands hovering near his wound.

“That night, when Genji made himself known to me… When I realized that, against all odds, he was not dead… I thought he was going to kill me. I _wanted_ him to kill me. It is what was meant to happen. What was supposed to happen. He was not supposed to forgive me. I still cannot quite believe that he has.” Hanzo pulled his hand away from his face to shake his head, looking incredulous. He was still staring at the wall over Angela’s shoulder, as if he needed to say these words but couldn’t bear to look at her as he said them. “But Genji was always a dreamer. Always the optimist. He believed he could get away with anything, that anything was possible if he wanted it badly enough. I suppose he was right.”

Hanzo snorted a laugh and flicked his gaze towards Angela, then down at the stitched up wound on his side.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I should not burden you with my insecurities.”

Angela hesitated. She almost bandaged Hanzo up in silence, almost let him leave without another word. But as she was pressing clean gauze to his side, she said quietly, “You can tell me more, if you’d like. I’ve… always wanted to know more about Genji. Before.”

Hanzo seemed taken aback by her words. For several moments he said nothing, and she thought maybe he’d decided to end the conversation there. She wouldn’t blame him. It felt like they were padding carefully across thin ice, too skittish to hold onto each other but both too afraid of falling to move away.

“He was…” Hanzo seemed to search for the right words. A smile tugged at the edges of his normally stern mouth. “He was even more cheery and excitable than he is now. Almost obnoxiously so. Our father adored him, but our mother was… concerned for him. As she had every right to be, I suppose. His attitude was not… befitting of a Shimada, even if he was not the heir. She tried to discipline him, but our father spoiled him. She died when we were teenagers, and Genji became… wild.”

Angela had finished taping the gauze over Hanzo’s wound and was sitting back now, listening to the lightness in Hanzo’s voice as he talked about his brother’s youth. “I’ve heard – and I’m quoting this from Blackwatch reports – that he was a ‘roguish playboy’,” Angela said.

Hanzo laughed. It was a short, low sound, but it was the first time Angela had ever heard Hanzo laugh a real, proper laugh. “He was,” Hanzo said. “He was that and more. He had a filthy mouth and an irreverent lifestyle and he was never afraid to boast about it. I heard more than I ever wanted to hear about his, ah, conquests.”

Angela snorted. Even though she’d known the most angry and restrained version of Genji for so many years, Hanzo’s words were not hard to believe.

“For a while, it was perhaps charming. There was a part of me that envied his carefree joy. But it became… self-destructive, eventually. Particularly after our father’s death, but even before that. It has… never been easy to be a member of the Shimada clan. Drugs, alcohol. Genji was certainly not the first Shimada to turn to them, but perhaps the first to… flaunt it so much.”

Angela nodded. Working on Genji’s body, she’d seen first hand the effects that narcotics and alcohol had left on it. There was nothing like a coma, extended hospitalization and an almost complete cybernetization of your inner organs to kick those bad habits, though.

“But Genji before…” Hanzo said softly. He pressed his hands together in his lap and leaned forward, winced at the movement in his side. “Genji as a child... He was my best friend. My only friend, really. Crime lords do not tend to send their kids to public schools or encourage them to socialize.”

He laughed again, but it struck Angela how easily Hanzo spoke of being the son of a crime lord. Though of course she knew Genji and Hanzo’s history, it was a childhood she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“Sometimes I have trouble believing that we turned out the way we did,” Hanzo said. “Of all the people for me to betray… I never would have thought it would be Genji. We were so close as children, you know? We loved each other dearly.”

Hanzo buried his face in his hand again, his voice wavering with unshed tears. “I truly am a monster.”

Angela reached out, hesitantly, and placed a hand on Hanzo’s bare shoulder. He winced slightly at her touch, but didn't pull away. She squeezed his shoulder gently, tried awkwardly be a reassuring.

“He told me that he wants you to forgive yourself,” she said gently, remembering Genji’s words.

Hanzo nodded. “Yes. He’s told me the same.”

“It’s hard, though, isn’t it? Harder to forgive yourself than to forgive someone else, I think,” Angela said.

Hanzo’s eyes flickered to her face, eyebrows raised.

“You are not the only one who is struggling with guilt,” she said. “It seems everyone at Overwatch has a past they’re still grappling with. I’m starting to suspect it’s part of the hiring policy.”

Hanzo barked a laugh. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It’s selfish of me to assume I am the only one with… demons. But what can I say. I am a selfish man.”

Hanzo’s words settled into the pit of Angela’s stomach with such familiarity that it was uncanny. She shouldn’t have been surprised. She and Hanzo were both grappling with similar guilt, both perhaps a little too fixated on Genji.

Hanzo stood up then, gingerly shrugged on a shirt over his bandaged wound.

“Thank you for your care, Dr. Ziegler,” he said. “And for the conversation.”

Angela nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Perhaps… perhaps we could have tea sometime, and continue the conversation.”

Hanzo’s brow creased, and he almost looked surprised. But then he smiled and bowed at Angela. “Yes,” he said. “I would like that.”


End file.
